Paradise Lost
by Borzoi
Summary: Set after THE scene in TVD100. What happens after Klaus and Caroline finally do the deed? One-shot about how I would have liked TVD to wrap up their storyline... for the moment. Not for good. ;) *I tried. I really tried to leave it at one chapter. Failed miserably.* ;)
1. Chapter 1

**Hello lovelies,**

**a Happy New Year to you all! :)**

**As I have been slightly disappointed with the way they handled KC in TVD100 - and that's putting it _very _diplomatically - I grabbed my laptop and wrote the aftermath of the forest scene the way I would have loved for it to happen. Disclaimer: I only watched the KC scenes on Youtube, I didn't really see what happened before or after, so I apologize for anything that may not be quite accurate. And as always - I do not own TVD/TO.**

**A big thank you to DiabolicalBowlerHat for being the guinea pig, as usual! Poor you! ;)**

**Please enjoy, dearies, and I hope some of you might like it! :)**

**XXX**

* * *

_What the fuck have I done?_

The light breeze that floated over her naked body was a tad too cool for comfort, as was the hard, not-quite frozen forest ground covered in fallen leaves that bore all colours of an impressionist painter's palette. She felt leaves on her back and her shoulders, a few tiny twigs beneath her legs, twigs that they had broken off the tree in their crazed hurry. Caroline dared not move a finger for fear that her uncomfortable little bubble of perfection would burst only a second too early. And burst it would. It had to, she had imposed that condition herself. But that had been two hours ago - and in those one hundred and twenty minutes from freaking heaven, her world had turned from an ordinary supernatural existence with its regular moments of chaos into a sparkling globe of fire, colour, beauty, and... Klaus.

She had slept with Klaus. With the one guy that made Damon Salvatore look like a prepubescent boyscout. And it had been fantastic beyond her wildest, dirtiest dreams.

After the first time, when her shaking legs had still been wrapped around his waist and his face had been buried in her shoulder, she had thought that this was it. She had finally rid herself of him, of the nagging, aching desire that sprang to life whenever she clapped eyes on the Original. She could not have been more mistaken. When he lifted his head to look at her, an expression of wild satisfaction blending into the glowing happiness and an underlying streak of sadness in his eyes, she had just whispered one word. _Again._ And he had immediately complied. That second time, he had made her scream. The third time... oh God, the third time. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips together, as if wanting to crush the bubbling emotions into a little pile of dust. Klaus had never taken his eyes off hers, and when she wanted to close them, to escape this burning gaze that seemed to speak to her in a thousand different languages, he had shaken his head. _'I wanted to you to confess, Caroline, but I know you would deeply regret the words the second you speak them. So I shall not make you. But I want you to allow your eyes to say it for you.'_ And from that moment on, their heated encounter had turned into something else. Her eyes had confessed. With every touch, every kiss, every sighed little moan, she had told him what he made her feel. His response had almost made her cry, and the beauty of it all had been so unexpected!

_That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight losing my religion._

Thanks, R.E.M. She could never have expressed her feelings this accurately herself. Caroline Forbes had just lost her religion, her every belief in who she thought she was, and in who she had been so sure Klaus would never stop being. How had she berated Elena for choosing Damon, thinking herself above the weakness of giving in to the allure of darkness, as Klaus himself had once put it. She had always felt that temptation, acknowledged it, and yet she had so firmly believed that she was strong enough to withstand until such a time that the damn allure miraculously evaporated. Ugh, it would take her a while to come to terms with what she had allowed to happen - sex and... confession. Her _perfect feathers _had not been ruffled today, they had been torn out and burned beyond recognition, and it had taught her that she was far from truly knowing who she was and what she wanted. Thinking about the journey of self-discovery that lay ahead of her made her both wary and exhilarated, although she quietly wished that it wouldn't always be Klaus who nudged her in a new direction and showed her an unfolding path.

Klaus.

Her eyes still closed, she soaked up the bliss of his protective arms around her, one hand on her back, one on the nape of her neck, his fingers lazily stroking her skin, in turn sending electric shocks through her system and soothing her every anxiety. This was how she had always imagined, _hoped,_ to feel after sex, the way they described it in the novels - wonderfully spent, elated and thousands of miles from cheap. Why did it again have to be Klaus who gave her this particular, addictive sensation? Who made her feel like the incarnation of womanhood, like a precious, revered treasure? Caroline had always seen fleeting glimpses of human Klaus, of the man hidden beneath layers and layers of cruelty, blood and violence, but right here, right now, he had shed every piece of armour and allowed her to see someone she had thought existed only in tiny fragments. Once more, she had been mistaken. The man who had so passionately made love to her today was someone who was as filled with hopes, dreams and the need to give as she was herself. And it was this discovery, more than anything else, that made her lose her religion. Bad was bad, good was good, correct? Klaus qualified as bad, he was not permitted to be the way he had been over the past couple of hours! He was not allowed to make her want to see more of that warmhearted, playful and overwhelmingly loving man whose acquaintance she had just made! She must never even think of the possibility that Big Bad Klaus could conquer more space in her heart than he was, as she had grudgingly admitted today, already occupying. He was not for her, she was not for him. Full stop. And the longer she stayed wrapped in his warm, perfect embrace and listened to that heart she knew was right now beating for no-one but her, the more her determination wavered.

In a blur, she was out of his arms and on her feet, gathering her torn, scattered clothes and dressing hurriedly. When she turned to face him one last time, she found Klaus leaning against a tree, _the _tree, wearing only his denims. His arms were folded over his chest, his ankles crossed. He looked the picture of carefree casualness, but Caroline was not fooled. His eyes were filled with dread, hurt and wariness.

"You promised," she merely said, trying to somehow arrange her torn blouse beneath her jacket, and even more desperately trying not to care about the look on his face.

"I did indeed. You are free, free to do whatever it is you want to do with your life." He paused, pushing himself away from the tree and walking towards her in a measured pace. It took Caroline some effort to keep her eyes from wandering to his bare chest and her mind from retrieving the memories of how soft his skin had felt under her touch, of how he had sighed with pleasure when she had run her fingers over his chest and abs. Of how he had whispered her name when her lips had followed the trail of her hands. "And I fully intend to keep my word. I will not only relieve you from my presence, my beautiful Miss Forbes. I, too, do not wish to cross your path again."

Dead silence followed his words. Caroline was unable to speak as the pain sliced through her like a giant war axe splitting a small plank of wood. He didn't want to see her again? Her thoughts whirled around, running amok, tugging and pulling at her, whispering and shouting until she felt like covering her ears and scream at them to stop.

_He didn't like it._

_Now that he's finally got what he wanted, it's out of his system._

_I'm a failure in bed, ah, in the woods. _

_I'm a failure in everything._

_I'm good for nothing._

_Nobody wants me._

_I'm not good enough._

_I'm... a waste of space._

Before she could say another word, she saw his eyes soften infinitesimally, and he took another step towards her. "Caroline, whatever it is you may believe of me, I am not a machine. I feel, I desire, I covet. I suffer. And suffer I will after we go our separate ways in a few more moments, knowing that you do not want me, that you do not want _this,_" he gestured between the two of them, "to be a part of your life. I accept it, but it pains me more than you shall ever be capable of understanding. The taste you have just given me of what could be is sweet enough to tear me open and leave me bleeding beyond repair, and the only way of carrying on with a life that does not include you, or the hope for you to eventually be mine, is never to lay eyes on you again. Just as you do not want to be reminded of what you perceive as your greatest moment of weakness, I do not ever again wish to be exposed to that blatant display of contempt you use to protect yourself from me. And I shall not delude myself into believing that what happened between us today has changed how you will treat me in the future." There was another pause, and Caroline screamed at her inner voice to shut up while it kept yelling at Klaus that today had changed everything. And nothing. His voice lowered further, and there was a slight strain to it as he went on. "As today is the day of confessions, let me say something to you. If I could, I would have someone compel me to forget the past few hours."

"What?" she almost shouted before she could stop herself. "I thought you wanted this. I mean..." She was lost. Something at the fringes of her brain caught his meaning, but she was too wound up, too confused to put her thoughts in order.

His smile was sad. "Yes, my love, I wanted this. Badly. And earlier, when you made me give you my word never to bother you again and started to kiss me, everything was perfectly clear to me. I would take what I could get, and move on. There is no shortage of problems and... distractions in New Orleans to keep my mind occupied, so I thought, accept what she is offering, Niklaus, be done with it and return home. Only that things are never quite as easy as they initially present themselves."

_Tell me about it. Oh, and say 'my love' again._

"Caroline, it is not often that I have truly made love to someone, and I certainly did not intend to today. But you overturned everything. The way you looked at me, the way you touched me, kissed me and so beautifully unravelled under my hands was quite honestly not what I expected, and I could not help but react to it. I said that what happened did not change anything between us, and that is the truth, but it changed everything for _me._ Knowing that, and knowing you will never be able to overcome what stands between you and me, I wish I had not been my opportunistic self, instead contenting myself with a kiss and the fact that I was right about those darkest desires of yours. The memory of what you gave me, and of what you made me give you, will haunt me forever. That is why I would prefer to forget what happened, and that is why I never want to lay eyes on you again."

He took her hand, raised it to his lips and pressed a tender, open-mouthed kiss on it that sent her into a new spiral of confusion. Not to mention the heat that rose inside her again. When he lifted his head, his dark blue eyes were a blizzard of emotions, sending out lightnings that seemed to strike her soul over and over until she shook her head in despair.

"Please. Just go."

Without another word, he bent down to collect his shirt and jacket, shrugging into the garments before looking at her again. "There has always been an inexplicable, flaming desire inside me to protect you from everything, at times even from me. Not so today. Today, you shall have a taste of my famed cruelty, Caroline, as I have no intention of suffering alone." In a violent move, he yanked her towards him, and his mouth was on hers. A moment of fear had flashed through her at his words, but what happened now was much worse than violence. Klaus' hands cupped her face, each and every one of his fingers in motion, caressing her skin, feeling her, touching her. His lips turned into silk, velvet, honey, as they worshipped hers. His tongue gently invaded her mouth, playing with her, pulling her deeper into this kiss than she had ever drowned before, making her surrender everything and everyone. Something sweet, glowing, sparkling blossomed in her soul, bringing her to life in a way that made her want to conquer the Earth, fly to the other end of space and sing at the top of her lungs. Everything inside her screamed and laughed and cried and danced, and she opened herself up to let it all in, to let _him _in. Some complete idiot who could definitely not be her felt like falling to her knees and beg him never to leave her again. It was so glorious, so all-consuming that at first, she did not even realize that he had released her and stepped back, his breathing accelerated, his eyes on fire. The first coherent thought that flashed through her head was that he was about to compel her, but he took another two steps away from her before he spoke, his voice almost vicious.

"This is it for you, Caroline Forbes. Mark my words. From this day forward, every single time that your lips touch another man's, you will remember this moment, this very moment when I almost made you cry merely from the beauty of a kiss. And you will know, until the day you die, that there is only one man in the entirety of the world who can make you feel this way. Only one man whose love for you is exactly what you have always wanted love to be, and more. Just as I will never cease to be in pain over not having you in my life, you will be in agony over knowing that no-one's love but mine will ever again suffice."

Stunned into speechlessness, she stared at him as he confined her to memory, desperate and determined. Neither of them moved, neither spoke. There were no sights, no sounds, no smells as the world ceased to exist for three, maybe four heartbeats.

And without a warning, Klaus was gone.

Her eyes still glued to the spot where he had been standing only a nanosecond ago, Caroline sagged against the tree and slowly sank to the ground. Pulling up her legs and wrapping her arms around them, she rested her forehead on her knees and started to sob.

She was crying over what she had done.

She was crying over how unspeakably lovely it had been.

She was crying over no longer knowing who she was.

She was crying because he was right.

* * *

Caroline's face was moist when she awoke in her bed the next morning. With the defiance of a sulking toddler, she rubbed her cheeks, attempting in vain to ignore the tear stains on her pillow. After she had returned to the Salvatore's last night, she had made some lame excuse about having gotten lost in the woods, and she had not stayed long, leaving for home as quickly as she could, evading her mother's questions about why she looked like she had made a quick dash to hell and back. In the isolation of her room, she had just shed her shredded clothes and hurried under the shower. She didn't want any reminders of his hands on her body, his tongue on her breasts, moving further south... Like a madwoman, she had scrubbed herself from head to toe, but it had not helped to chase away the glow that did not seem to leave her body - just as the dull ache did not want to leave her heart. After crying herself into a fitful sleep, she had been besieged by dreams of his face, of the deliriously happy smile after their first kiss, of the way he held her. And of his last words.

_No-one's love but mine will ever again suffice._

In no more than a few sentences, he had managed to stab her heart more brutally than anything or anyone ever before, and now that she thought about it in the light of a new day, what he had _done_ to her was just as brutal. By giving himself to her so openly, with his full heart and everything he had so carefully hidden for centuries, he had turned their existing connection into something rock-solid that she could no longer ignore, no matter how hard she tried. Plain old Caroline Forbes had the power to break through all of Klaus' defenses and bring out what no-one but maybe Elijah knew was still buried underneath all the crap. In turn, Klaus was the only one who saw all sides of her and still did not cease to consider them facets of a diamond, each sparkling in itself when the light fell on it, and each contributing to make her a priceless gem in his eyes. The fact that he had planted the knowledge in her head that there would never be another man who was capable of seeing her like this, and of loving every single facet of the diamond with equal passion, was so mean that it all but stifled her. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, and she was just about to indulge in another crying jag when a knock interrupted her self-pity party.

"Honey, are you awake? Matt's here to see you, and I have to go to work."

Steadying her voice, she cleared her throat. "Could you tell Matt I'll be right down? Five minutes."

"Will do. See you later."

"Yeah, see you, Mum."

Wiping her face on the pillow - it was already ruined, so what difference did a dozen more tears make? - she hopped out of bed and dashed into the bathroom, beyond grateful for the distraction.

Five minutes later, she found Matt in the kitchen, a coffee mug in his hand, leaning over the counter and staring out of the window. "Is there any coffee left?" she asked lightly, nodding towards his cup.

"I think so," he said, watching her as she made her way to the coffee machine and found some leftovers she poured into a mug of her own. "You're sleeping in today?"

"Supernatural life is draining," Caroline muttered, knowing how feeble she sounded. "So, what are you doing here at this ungodly hour?"

Matt snorted. "It's eleven!" Then he hesitated. "Look, Care, I wanted to talk to you about something. I spoke to Rebekah for a while after she saved me yesterday. It looks like Klaus was here, too, by the way. Have you seen him?"

"Only for a moment," she said evasively, and it was not even a lie. It seemed that their hours in the woods had been over in a second. "Why?"

He hesitated. "I was wondering... did he tell you?"

Caroline didn't like the strange tone in Matt's voice, and a strong sense of foreboding flooded her body. Whatever this was, she was pretty sure it would not be good news. "Tell me what?" she demanded, hoping that he had not heard the tremor in her words.

"I couldn't believe it at first, I thought Rebekah was making it all up, but it turns out that she wasn't kidding. She explained that it was some sort of loophole of nature, as she put it, and that no-one knew something like that could actually happen. Apparently, all of New Orleans is in an uproar over it, witches, werewolves and vampires alike, and Klaus has really warmed to the idea, she said. I can imagine that..."

"Matt," she snapped, her fear growing, "what the heck are you _talking _about?"

"Hayley is pregnant, Care. With Klaus' baby."

It was like a giant hole had opened up underneath her feet, and an unknown gravity pulled her into it only to spit her out on the other side. _Impossible._ The word appeared in front of her inner eye and began to multiply until she saw nothing else. _Impossible. Impossible. Impossible._ Klaus was a vampire, and none of them could procreate! It must be a trick, a hoax, a ruse that slutty bitch of a werewolf had come up with to extort something from him! Her thoughts danced through her head, but it was not a happy dance. Caroline felt sick to her stomach, and she couldn't even say what was worst about all this. That he had slept with that cheap whore in the first place? That they would have a child and be bound to each other for all eternity? That they _could _have a child together? That they were now living happily in New Orleans? That someday, they would all have to deal with father and son - or daughter - Mikaelson? Or that he had not bothered to say a word to her during their encounter in the woods and slept with her despite expecting a child with another woman? Whatever it was, she wished she could just throw up here and now.

Her voice was no more than a whisper as she tried to joke, "Brilliant. Meet the Munsters. Herman, Lily and little Eddie. Thank God they've moved to another suburb."

Matt's eyes narrowed as he examined her face. After a brief moment of silence, he cocked his head. "What's going on, Care?"

Plastering a neutral smile to her face, she took a sip of her coffee. It tasted like acid. "Hey, you've just told me that the Dark Lord and Bellatrix Lestrange are going to spawn a little demon. Do you expect me to do cartwheels at the news that there will be another Mikaelson to deal with?"

He shook his head. "I know you. That's not it." He covered her hand with his and looked at her more closely, his face open and gentle. "Whatever it is, Care, you can't shock me. Those times are long gone. Hey, I spent an entire summer travelling the world with his crazy-but-somehow-charming sister, so do you seriously believe I would think less of you, whatever it is you did, Care?"

It was the kindness and the understanding in his voice that made the dam burst. She let her head sink onto the counter they were sitting at and started to cry in earnest. A moment later, Matt had pulled her into his arms, patting her back and muttering how she should cry herself out, and not worry about a thing, as somehow, everything would work itself out. Meaningless, stupid little words that were so comforting.

Caroline cried for what seemed a lifetime before the urge finally subsided. Matt patted her back again before he returned to his stool while Caroline reached for a kleenex, drying her face and dabbing at her eyes. Taking another swig of the now-cold coffee, she looked up to find him gazing at her expectantly.

"Matt, I'm sorry, but I can't."

"He means something to you, doesn't he? Klaus?"

"Of course not!" she exclaimed, hoping that she sounded indignant enough for Matt to believe her. "He's ruined everyone's lives, basically, so he can go to hell for all I care."

_And you do care if he goes to hell or not, don't you? You still do. Even after this._

An image appeared in her head, a vision of Klaus and Hayley, naked, sweating. Of Klaus doing all those unbelievable things to Hayley he had only yesterday done to her. Another wave of nausea gripped her, and it was all she could do to keep herself from bursting into more tears. She had told him to go and never to return. Before that, when he had terrorized Mystic Falls, she had insulted him, screamed at him, pushed him away, tried to kill him and treated him with all the disdain she was capable of. And now, she had freely and voluntarily had sex with him, knowing that they would both move on with their lives and never see each other again, so she had no right to be upset over whatever he did, had done and would do with other women. But it _hurt._ She had always secretly assumed, hoped, that he was spending his days pining over her - when he was not busy being Vlad the Impaler - and that he did not even look in other women's direction. Naive, childish, yes, but he had a thing for _her,_ so what had he been doing sleeping with other women?

Trying to call herself to order, she glanced at Matt who had not taken his eyes off her. She knew that he would not probe or try to coerce her into speaking when she didn't want to, and much as she longed to share the burden of her little secret, she couldn't. He was Tyler's best friend, and he would never understand - as would none of her friends. She didn't understand it herself, just as she didn't understand the pain that seemed to fill her and leave no space for anything else.

"Matt," she said, her eyes pleading, "can we just forget about this conversation? I haven't slept too well, I have a lot of things on my mind, and everything that's been going on lately has made me a bit emotional. I think I just overreacted at the thought of a vampire having a child, knowing that I can never have one myself."

His face softened, and he nodded. "I think I understand that. Okay, let's just forget about it. I'm on my way to The Grill, wanna join in?"

"No thanks, I have a couple of errands to run before returning to Whitmore tomorrow. You go ahead, I'll meet you guys at the Salvatore's later."

With a nod, Matt slid off the stool and walked towards the door. When he had almost reached it, he turned and looked at her for a long moment. "I'm Tyler's friend, that's true. But I'm also yours, Care, and I just want you to know that I'm here if there's anything you want to talk about."

She gave him as warm a smile as she was currently capable of. "I know. Thanks, Matt."

The moment he had left, Caroline flashed up to her room and snatched her phone from the nightstand. She knew that what she was about to do was all shades of wrong, but if she did not let it out, she would explode, and there was no-one who would be able to piece her back together.

**Congratulations. Blue or pink for the baby shower, you lying bastard?**

Not ten seconds later, her phone buzzed. She stared at his name on the display, on and on until the cell finally stopped ringing.

Then she crushed the phone in her hand, and after a minute, there was nothing left but an unrecognizable clot of metal. In a daze, she opened her window and tossed the amorphous ball out into the crisp air with all her might. Staring unseeingly into the void, Caroline slowly closed the window and returned to her bed like a ghost, pulling off her shoes and dropping onto the mattress. She hid underneath the blanket, curling into a ball, and remained there, unmoving, until her mother returned from work ten hours later.

* * *

Two weeks later, Caroline stepped into the dorm room she shared with Elena, letting her books clatter onto the desk and dumping her bag on a chair. Today's lecture had been incredibly dull, and boredom was something she could not bear. It allowed her thoughts to wander, and they invariably wandered to an off-limits area they had no business to be. She had had the fidgets all day, and it was not from lack of sleep after last night's party. Elena had gone back to Mystic Falls last Friday, and ever since then, Caroline had not allowed herself a moment's peace. She had either studied, partied, drunk or even - heaven forbid - worked out. Every hour of her day was filled with activity, and the nights she was unable to find a party, she flashed all over town in desperate search of distraction. In spite of being a vampire, the full-throttle lifestyle exhausted her mentally, but it was preferable to the alternative. Preferable to facing the truth.

The truth was that she could not stop thinking about him.

She hated herself for it, and she hated her stupid, traitorous, idiotic heart for what it was doing to her. She was still outraged about the whole baby issue, although it no longer was what bothered her the most - Bonnie had now also heard it from some a witch she knew in New Orleans, who had given her some more details. Apparently, what had happened between Klaus and Hayley had been some sort of drunken one night stand, and although Klaus had - after initially flipping out completely - begun to accept the idea of the child and protect its mother against everything and everyone, they did not seem to be romantically involved. Rumour had it that something was going on between Hayley and Elijah, though, and that Klaus was more interested in some human barkeeper who, according to Bonnie, looked like the spitting image of Caroline. They had all laughed at that, although Caroline had thought that her own laugh had never sounded so artificial. She didn't find anything amusing about it, even though it was none of her business.

_Your choice, girl. You could have made it your business, so stop moaning._

With an exasperated huff, she flipped on the desk light and was on her way to the fridge when something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. On her pillow sat a thick, cream-coloured envelope. Her name was written on it in Klaus' beautiful hand.

Caroline's heart began to stutter. For a moment, she was seriously tempted to take the envelope and tear it into a million snippets before burning it and scattering the ashes all over campus. But she couldn't. It was screaming at her to open it, and she could almost hear his lovely, deep voice. _'Please, Caroline.'_

Her fingers were shaking when she pulled a chair to the window and sat, staring down at the ancient copperplate until another realization hit home. He had been here, in her room, to leave the envelope. _That_ was why she had been so twitchy all day, and that was why there had been a couple of moments when she had felt that someone was breathing down her neck. Her eyes wandered over to her bed, and for a fleeting moment, she asked herself whether he had ran his hand over her pillow. Then she berated herself for being such a jerk, and even more for how the knowledge that he had been near made her breathe more freely. Setting her jaw, she tore the envelope open.

The first sheet she pulled out was a coal drawing, incredibly detailed and skillfully done. It showed a tree, no, the trunk of tree and the bottom branches with its scattered leaves. On the ground, right at the foot of the tree, more leaves and some small, broken-off twigs were covering the earth in wild disarray, some grass peaking out between the foliage. To the tree's right, where the drawing ended, a small pile of what looked like fabric was almost hidden underneath the leaves, and Caroline's breath caught when she understood what it was. It was her blouse, the blouse he had torn in his desperate need to touch her bare skin. Underneath it, two words were written.

_Paradise Lost._

"My God," she whispered, biting her lip so hard she was sure it would bleed, unable to tear her eyes from the words that soon began to become blurry. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear her mind, she placed the drawing next to her on the windowsill and pulled the next sheet from the envelope. It was a letter, handwritten on the same thick, precious paper, and her blood began to race as she started reading.

_My Love,_

_for many days and nights, I have racked my brains over what to say to you, and how. Judging from the fact that you changed your phone number, I am positive that neither a phone call nor my visit would be welcome at this time, so I have decided on the old-fashioned way, hoping with every fiber of my being that you will not respond in the old-fashioned way - by tearing this letter to shreds and burning me in effigy. Well, hope dies last, as the saying goes, and I wish that you will let me say a few things to you._

_Caroline, I did not speak of my impending fatherhood when we met in the woods, and I am sorry. On that day, something happened I had dreamed of for a very long time, and yes, I was being utterly egoistic. I could not bear the thought of allowing anything to interfere with my few perfect hours, the only time with you I was ever going to be granted. It should come as no surprise that I have desired you from the very moment I laid eyes on you, and I had lost all hope that you were ever going to return my feelings. When miracles happen, you do not question them, and you do not spoil them, for they are much too rare and far too precious. Our lovemaking was such a miracle to me._

_It is true that I slept with Hayley, once, after an evening of excessive drinking, and that for some arcane reason, she is now expecting my child. The encounter between us meant nothing to either me or her. I most certainly do not love her, and to be perfectly honest, I have not decided whether I even like her. But I will do everything in my power, Caroline, to protect my unborn child. This child is another miracle, no matter under what circumstances it was sired. It is and will always be a part of my life._

_So will you._

_You said that you have a life to build for yourself, that I have no part in said life, and that you never want to see me again, which I accepted. And you may believe me when I say it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Right after making love to you, I was briefly tempted to forsake my promise and use every means to persuade you to join me here in New Orleans. I have no doubt that I would have succeeded. But that is not what I want, not how I want you. As previously stated, I am not a machine, and I am perfectly well aware of how what happened between us changed your perception of yourself. I have seen it in your eyes that day. And I have purposefully added to your pain. I was hurting, and that is what Klaus Mikaelson does when someone causes him pain - he reciprocates. Can I ever ask you to forgive me, my beautiful Caroline? I certainly do hope so, as something else came to pass that day. When I was on my way home, and my obnoxious sister had finally ceased to gush about that quarterback, I suddenly saw something very clearly._

_I am not ready for you, as you are not ready for me, my love. But someday, we will be._

_Caroline, much as I dread the thought, I want you to stay in Whitmore. Finish your college education, choose a profession, find a life. Find yourself. I know who you are and what you want, but you need to discover it on your own, as I am certain you will in no time at all. I told you once that you are beautiful, strong and full of light, and those words are truer than ever. Just as you have to embark on a journey to the woman you will soon be, I have to embark on a voyage back to the man I once was. You met him in the woods that day, for a few short hours, and I had a feeling that you liked him. He will be hard to find, and even harder will it be to persuade Klaus to hand the reins to Niklaus from time to time, but I will learn to handle it. To handle myself._

_For you._

_I want you more than ever, but I understand that I have to earn your trust, your forgiveness, and your acceptance, and that it may take a long while to do so._

_I do love you, Caroline. You are the woman who owns me. In all the supernatural chaos, in your everyday life, in your dreams - never doubt that, never forget it. Take the time you require, the time you feel you need for yourself. And when you feel you are ready, come to me. I will be waiting._

_Always and forever yours,_

_Niklaus_

_P.S.: There is one more apology I need to make. It is unforgivable how I failed to tell you that making love to you was beyond compare, and how it has been filling my dreams ever since. I have never seen a sight more breathtaking than the ecstasy on your face, my love._

Through a veil of tears she didn't even notice, Caroline stared at the letter. Her mind was numb, and if she had been confused before, she was a complete mess now. She knew that he loved her, she had known for a long time. Although he had not said it with so many words during their lovemaking, his eyes and his entire body had all but screamed it at her, and she remembered how for one second, she had wished she could say it to him, to bring more of that incredible happiness into his eyes. Cursing herself for it right after, of course.

But seeing it written now, in his lovely hand, together with everything else his letter said - and didn't say - was almost too much for her heart to handle. He was giving her all the time in the world, time she sorely needed. Her throat constricted when she reread the passage about how he knew who she was. This man, this evil, lost, damaged, incredible man _did _know her, however much she had always struggled against admitting it, and instead of being smug about it and pushing her in the direction he wanted, he just let her go to find out on her own. He had no guarantees that she would ever return to him, that she would not fall for someone else or continue to nourish the loathing that she had shown him for so long. But he took the risk, and what was even more unbelievable was his plan to earn her love.

Wiping a tear from her cheek, Caroline accidentally dropped the envelope. When she bent down to collect it from underneath the chair, she saw something protruding from it and frowned. Another drawing? Picking up the envelope and examining her finding more closely, she finally gathered what she was looking at.

It was a dried leaf.

She ran a gentle finger over the little, pale green leaf, and before she knew what she was doing, she lifted it to her lips and kissed it, her eyes closed and her heart beating in her throat.

Rising from the chair, she took the drawing, the letter and the little leaf and carefully stowed them back in the envelope which she then placed under her pillow, knowing that she would spend the better part of the night reading and rereading it. And that she would carry it with her wherever she went from now on. Walking over to her bag, she fished her new phone from the side pocket and typed in the number that may have been thrown out of her window in Mystic Falls but had never left her memory. Her text message was short, and after a second of hesitation, she hit send.

**Paradise is not lost.**

Stepping back to the window, she let her eyes wander over the campus lawns and towards a cluster of birches at the very end of the compound. There was a faint movement underneath one of the trees, but it was too far even for her vampire sight to discern more than a hazy shape. Then again, she needed no eyesight to know what it was. _Who _it was. Her phone buzzed, just once, and without moving her head, she lifted it in front of her face.

**_Let me know when you want to go find it. I happen to know where it is._**

That made her chuckle, and she returned her eyes to the shadow in the distance - only to find it gone. There was a quick jab of pain in her heart, but then her gaze darted to her pillow.

With a smile, Caroline sensed everything inside her click into place, the way it only ever did when one knew the path taken was the right one. And when there was no doubt whatsoever of being deeply loved, and of always having a place to go. She cast another look outside and calmly returned to her desk, sorting her books and sitting down to prepare for tomorrow's lectures.

Tonight, she needed no party, no drink and no distraction.

Tonight, she needed nothing but herself.

And the future that waited underneath her pillow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Guys, seriously - you can't do this to me! I write a one-shot, then want to take an extended KC break due to time restraints, and you so overwhelm me with your incredible response that you don't leave me another choice but to write some more! ;)**

**I know I have inexcusably failed to thank you all for your lovely comments - again - but I do hope you will once more forgive me. Sometimes, real life does get in the midst of things... Anyway, please know that I love, appreciate and eagerly devour each and every single one of your reviews, and that they make me happier than you could possibly imagine.**

**So here we go... Paradise Lost continues for two more chapters. You will, however, need to be patient with me when it comes to chapter 3, should you still be inclined to read it, as it will take me some time to complete. **

**My very special thanks are, as always, dedicated to the lovely DiabolicalBowlerHat for putting up with my writing - and my whining about it. ;)**

**Dearies, you're all just amazing!**

**Please enjoy!**

**XXX**

**Sybille**

* * *

FIVE YEARS LATER

Klaus was nervous.

It had been five years since the vow he had made, the promise never to return to Mystic Falls, and in spite of being here for a purpose Caroline would not only condone but encourage, it felt surprisingly uncomfortable to break his word today. Upon receiving Stefan's phone call late last night, he had responded to the younger Salvatore's plea with but one sentence. _Is she there? _He knew she was no longer living in her hometown as in fact Damon was, for reasons unknown, keeping him updated on everything that happened in Mystic Falls, but there was always a possibility of her being in town to visit her mother. When Stefan had confirmed that Caroline was indeed at work in Chicago and to his knowledge had no plans to visit anytime soon, Klaus had agreed to the quick trip. Once more, it was about saving Damon whose tendency to get himself into frequent werewolf trouble never ceased to astonish. And annoy.

While he made his way through the forest that had surrounded Mystic Falls ever since the time of the first settlers - the Mikaelson family among them - he took a moment to reflect on everything that had happened since he had last set foot in these woods. Since he had last been truly and completely happy for a few fleeting minutes.

New Orleans was once more his family's home, the realm of the undisputed rulers of the world. Over the first three years, he had had to handle dozens of attempts at revolution, successfully battling each upheaval until every last witch, vampire and werewolf had finally understood that there _was _no way to defeat a Mikaelson. The price had been bloodshed, tears and suffering on both sides, but it had been worth the effort. For the past couple of years, the Vieux Carré had been a haven of peace and order the likes of which were a first for the supernatural community. Klaus ruled with a carrot-and-stick approach that seemed to be working well enough to maintain a balance amongst the non-human population, and yet, he would never allow himself to be fooled into believing that this momentary peace was of a lasting quality. If there was anything he had learnt over the course of his lengthy life, it was that peace was merely an anomaly between periods of war, and that no rational being must ever be foolish enough to feel completely safe. So he kept himself on his toes, always prepared for a new attack and watching over his family like a hawk.

His family that should have grown by one five years ago.

Never, not once in his supernatural life, had he felt more powerless than during the fleeting minutes after his daughter's birth, when the unexpected, glowing joy of holding his own child, this blood of his blood, had slowly been overridden by the realisation that she was not going to live past her first few, weak heartbeats. Klaus had stood in the middle of the room, the little girl cradled in his arms, watching how the spark of life that had only just ignited left her eyes. Those eyes that had been fixed on his face from the very second she had been placed in his arms and never wavered until she was gone. The connection between him and his daughter, that before he had first laid eyes on her was merely an abstract, hazy feeling, had turned into tangible reality, and in those few, isolated moments that they had stared at each other, he had seen a chance. A future that might not be free of but wasn't centred around blood, violence and perpetual battles. And then, only a second after the burst of warmth had blossomed inside him, he had known. He had _heard. _His child, this tiny creature of innocence and hope, would be irrevocably taken from him. Her father was the most powerful creature on the face of the planet, and yet, her heart had not been given strength enough to cope with the burden of its heritage. He had sunk to his knees, ignoring Rebekah's quiet sobs and her hand on his shoulder, holding his daughter against his chest and running his fingers over her pale little cheeks until her very last heartbeat resounded in the room like a thunderbolt. Without a word, he had risen to his feet, cast an absent look at the still-unconscious Hayley and his brother and sister, carefully hid the lifeless body inside his jacket and flashed out of the house, leaving everything and everyone behind. Only when he had cried the very last tear he had in him did he make his way to Bayou Palo. Once, many decades ago when he had been chasing someone down, he had stumbled across a remote little dry area next to the Bayou, covered with thick, ancient cypresses and framed by hundreds of orange daylilies. Beauty and peace. Klaus could not think of a more appropriate place to bury his daughter. It took him next to no time to build a makeshift coffin from nothing but cypress wood, yet he dug the grave at human speed, for some reason feeling that he owed the little one that effort. When he was done, he sat next to the burial site he did not mark but would forever remember, his hand on the loose earth, and stared into the void, letting the pain wash over him.

After his initial shock over the impossible pregnancy had waned, Klaus had gradually begun to acquaint himself with the concept of fatherhood. During the months he had spent protecting Hayley and his unborn child, joy and fear had swapped places in his heart on an almost hourly basis, at times making him wonder whether he was finally succumbing to schizophrenia. One minute, the thought of a little girl who did not know or care who he was and what he had done elated him like little else ever had, and one moment later, he was eaten up by the blinding fear of failing her like his parents had failed their entire family. He was still Klaus, a man who had lived for a thousand years without ever learning how to establish true and lasting rapport with anyone, not even those closest to him - how was he supposed to be a father? And yet, despite his fears and doubts, he had _wanted _his daughter, so much so that he had even been willing to accept Hayley's permanent presence in his life, plus her budding relationship with his brother, in spite of the knowledge that she was not the right woman for Elijah. But however much he had thought to have arrived at finally understanding the depth of his feelings for his unborn daughter, the force of his sorrow over losing this baby girl he had only known for minutes had still taken him by surprise.

So he had sat next to his child's grave and never, not during his blackest of days, had he felt more lonely. Klaus knew that Elijah and even Rebekah would be at his side if he allowed them to, but he could simply not bear to share his grief with them. No-one had known what his daughter had meant to him, and no-one ever would. No-one. Hours had passed, and the loneliness had grown by the minute, turning into a pain that became all but physical. When he could no longer stand the agony, he had pulled his phone from his jacket.

_Caroline Forbes_

The mere act of staring at the name on the display had had such a soothing effect on his mind that he had to summon everything that was left of his strength to resist the temptation. Gods, how he had needed her that day! He would have given his life, his soul and all he had ever owned for one moment of comfort in her arms. His finger had hovered over the call button while random pictures and sounds had invaded his mind, memories and fantasies melting into one giant chaos.

_Caroline in his arms on the forest ground, worming herself deep into his embrace. Full of need._

_A beautiful, elegant room. A bed. Caroline holding him. So much warmth. So much tenderness in her touch. This time, the need is his._

_Her lovely voice. A whisper._

_"I'm here, Klaus. You will not lose me, not ever. Let go. Your heart is safe with me."_

Everything inside him had bled when he had erased her number and slipped the phone back into his pocket. He would never call her, and even less so in those instances he needed her the very most. He had been raw, vulnerable, on the verge of breaking into thousands of little shards after his daughter's death, and one word from Caroline would have sufficed to toss him into an abyss deep enough for him to never emerge again. However badly he yearned for her to give him solace, he could and would not ask it of her. Not yet. Maybe not ever, but that was something only time would tell. He had risen, cast one last look at his baby girl's grave and stormed off the clearing, falling into another run, faster and more aggressive than the first, felling smaller trees, crushing a tiny hut that had happened to stand in his way, and even killing a raccoon that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had screamed and roared and rampaged for longer than he cared to remember today, but in the very end, he had returned home with his sanity intact.

Hayley had been unconscious for the better part of four days, and when she awoke and he had told her, it had been her turn to scream. Whatever else he might have thought of her, he had not for one second doubted that her sorrow was as real and solid as his own. The four of them had visited the grave together, just this once, and not two days later, Hayley had silently disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a note for Elijah whose content his brother had never shared. Some months later, Klaus had received information that she was now living with a pack of werewolves somewhere in the Appalachians. She had not returned to New Orleans, nor had any of the Mikaelson siblings sought her out. She was a chapter of the past, and as far as Klaus was concerned, this chapter was closed.

With a sigh, he flashed forward, banning the remembrances into the back of his head where they belonged. He wanted to get this over with and put as much distance as possible between himself and Mystic Falls before thoughts of the divine time he had spent with Caroline took on more space inside him than they already did. Not once in these past five years had he spoken with or seen her, in spite of being sorely tempted on a regular basis. Klaus had been as far removed from living the life of a monk as he was from starting to bunny hunt, but none of the women he had slept with over the years had stirred what she had during these few, crazy hours they had spent in heaven. That day in the woods... Klaus had not believed for one moment that Caroline would ever compromise her beliefs to the extent of not only kissing him, but allowing him to make actual love to her. Even more incredulous had he been at her heated response. The way she had held nothing back suggested that their encounter had meant as much to her as it had to him. He had always known that she was desperately hiding her desire for him from everyone including herself, and seeing her yield to the temptation he very obviously represented had been exhilarating, but what had nearly killed him was the realisation that there was _more._ That there was a layer underneath her lust that had made her shiver in his arms and touch him with a delicacy he had never experienced from any other woman_._ Leaving her had cost him dearly, and subduing the urge to kill both his blabbing sister and the equally talkative quarterback after receiving Caroline's text had been a nasty piece of work. Her not answering his calls - and changing her number - had put him through an unprecedented agony until after a couple of weeks, he had finally realised what her reaction meant. Caroline _cared._ So much so that subconsciously, she felt that the role she played in his heart entitled her to know what was happening in his life. Had he meant little to nothing to her, she would have shrugged off the news, maybe with a raised brow, and never bothered to change her number or send him a text in the first place. It was what gave him the confidence to write to her, for he did feel that a few things needed to be said, and he had been richly rewarded.

_Paradise is not lost._

Even after deleting her number a few months later, he had kept her text. While he did not look at it often, it never to this day failed to make his heart give a double-take when he did.

As he approached the Salvatore house, the door opened, revealing Stefan who Klaus supposed had sensed his arrival. The younger Salvatore looked worn, a fact Klaus assumed had to do with the unrelenting doppelganger drama rather than his brother's distress. Damon had stayed in loose contact with Klaus over the years, even visiting New Orleans a few times when he needed to get away from all the chaos, and during one of those occasions, they had had a few drinks too many, getting in a rather maudlin mood during which Damon had unexpectedly poured his heart out. After some initial back and forth between Katerina and Elena as to who was entitled to the latter's body, Elena had won said argument with the help of her witchy friend Bonnie, making Katerina disappear for good, although Klaus had his doubts on that particular matter. Yet his thirst for revenge on any of the Petrova ladies had long been quelled, and Katerina could strut her stuff like The Girl from Ipanema for all he cared. Elena had never mattered to him in the first place, other than in her function as his human blood bank. But the Salvatores seemed to be trapped in some endless spiral of heartbreak over Miss Gilbert, and there were moments when Klaus even felt a bit sorry for them. Damon had told him that the old Mystic Falls posse was no longer in existence after some major fallouts that had happened shortly after the Elena-Katerina farce. Tyler had been first to leave, joining a pack not too far from Hayley's, as he had apparently not been able to get over the fact that his ex had slept with his mortal enemy and that none of the others was prepared to side with him over his self-righteous indignation. The quarterback had opened his own bar in Lynchburg - something Klaus suspected his sister's sponsoring behind - Bonnie and the younger Gilbert had moved to Charlotte for reasons he had entirely forgotten, and Elena had finally decided that she needed some Salvatore-free time every once in a while, taking a job in Newport but returning regularly. Still, neither Stefan nor Damon seemed to be willing to move on with their lives.

"Klaus," the younger Salvatore said, a surprisingly genuine smile on his face, "thanks for coming."

They briefly shook hands before Klaus gestured towards the house. "What happened this time?"

Stefan gave an exasperated huff as they entered the mansion. "Ask him. I have lost count of the times and reasons he gets himself bitten."

"He needs to work on his people skills," Klaus muttered with a small chuckle, seeing Stefan's lips twitch.

"Look who's talking," a weak, cracked voice sounded from above. Lifting a corner of his mouth, Klaus nodded at the other vampire.

"I'll be back in a minute."

Not five seconds later, he stood in Damon's room, gazing down at Salvatore the Elder who was writhing on his bed, his skin waxen, sallow and covered in sweat. He was already past the stage of the hallucinations, it seemed, and he had mere hours left. "Damon, Damon," Klaus tsked, "what is it with this penchant to irritate every single werewolf that crosses your path?"

"Blame them, not me," Damon rasped, "they are the ones with the anger management issues. Let's hear it, then."

"Let us hear what?"

"You don't do anything out of the goodness of your heart. What will it cost me, Klaus?"

With a shrug, Klaus snatched an empty glass from the nightstand, smelling faint traces of Bourbon. Biting his wrist, he let his blood flow into the heavy crystal tumbler, watching it in silence before he returned his attention to Damon. "You currently have nothing to offer that could be of interest to me, mate, so I suggest you thank me and get back to business." He handed Damon the glass, gave him a nod and turned to leave. When he reached the door, Damon's voice sounded again.

"You know I'm not very good at this, buddy, but... thank you. Seems that I owe you."

Klaus cast a quick look over his shoulder before he left. "Yes. You do."

When he arrived downstairs, he found Stefan standing next to the window, a glass in hand. Gesturing towards the various carafes, the younger Salvatore said, "Drink?"

After a moment's hesitation, the Original sighed. "Why not."

He sat while Stefan poured a generous helping of Scotch into another tumbler and came around the armchair, offering him the glass. The Scotch alleviated some of the tension that had gripped Klaus ever since setting foot in the woods today, and he leaned back into the chair. "Things have not changed much around here, have they?"

"No," Stefan replied, swirling the contents of his tumbler, "I guess it is one of the charms of Mystic Falls. If change happens at all, it sneaks up on you so slowly that you only ever notice a few years later."

"I was referring more to you and Damon. And Elena."

The younger Salvatore gave him a wry smile. "I know. I was stalling."

There was a fleeting moment when Klaus felt reminded of what their friendship had used to be in the old glory days. However much Stefan wished to deny it - what had connected them back in the twenties had never quite ceased to exist. They had both changed in numerous ways, some more subtle than others, they had tried to kill each other, they had moved on from all that, but something was still there.

"That bad?" Klaus merely asked, taking a sip of his drink while scrutinising Stefan over the rim of his glass. The silence that ensued stretched on, and Klaus was just asking himself whether Stefan was self-conscious about Damon listening in - which the older Salvatore was not, judging by how his breathing had become deep and regular - when the other vampire spoke again, his voice strained and hesitant.

"I had hoped that things would become clearer and easier, with time, but they don't. We seem to be moving in circles. I know... I know that Damon loves her no less than I do, which makes it all so difficult. Elena can't seem to bring herself to decide on one of us and casting the other out of her life for good, and neither Damon nor I can bring ourselves to leave and break the vicious circle." He sounded resigned, the way junkies did when they spoke of how the addiction held them in its iron grip, ruling every aspect of their lives. Klaus pursed his lips.

"You know, I once said to your brother about you and Elena that crazy or not, that kind of love never dies. Look at Sage and my late brother Finn - separated for nine hundred years, they cast one look at each other and seamlessly returned to the point where they had left off. However far afield their minds may have been, that love was and is eternal. So is yours, but I am afraid that I have to admit, so is Damon's, which makes it so hard for Elena to choose. When two men fall for the same woman, one is usually more invested than the other, and the woman in question instinctively knows whose love is the strongest. Well, she may not always follow her instincts and choose wisely, but in her heart, she knows. Your case, however, is a bit more complex. I do not suppose that this is what you want to hear, Stefan, but whilst I still believe that Elena does belong with you, it cannot be denied that part of her belongs with Damon, too. So unless all three of you are ready to share, which you are not, one of you needs to step up and sacrifice his eternal peace of mind, if it is your wish to ever have a hope at escaping that endless spiral."

Stefan's head sank back against his chair. For a moment, his eyes closed and his lips were pressed into a thin line. When he looked at Klaus anew, his eyes were tormented. "Much as I hate to admit it, I know you're right. The problem is that I... haven't yet arrived at the point where I'm ready to make that sacrifice."

"Who says it has to be you?"

A grim little smile played around the younger Salvatore's lips. "Have you met Damon?"

That pulled a chuckle from Klaus. Raising his glass, he said, "Good point. Ah, do you not miss the easy times when you and your brother sided against me to protect Elena? A common enemy is such a blessing, would you not agree?"

Stefan rolled his eyes and took a swig of his drink, giving Klaus the distinct impression that he longed to move on from the topic. And Stefan's next question proved him right. "So, what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Have you moved on?"

This time, it was Klaus' turn to stall. "I always do. I've lived for a thousand years, mate, and I cannot afford not to move."

The other man's eyes were on his when he said, "Come on, Klaus. You've just given me a passionate lecture on the kind of love that never dies, and the one single question you asked me when I called was whether she is here. Do I need to make a drawing of two connecting dots?"

Klaus searched Stefan's face for mockery, hidden agendas or hints of hostility, but there was nothing. For a moment, though, he considered lying. But speaking to someone who knew her, who was her friend, was second best to speaking to her. It made him feel a little closer to her, and he would allow himself the sensation for a few moments before he went on his way.

"No," he breathed, "I have not moved on, not in that respect. It would seem that your plight is not entirely alien to me, minus the brotherly competition this time."

Stefan merely nodded. "Can I ask you a question?" When Klaus gestured for him to continue, he said, "Why have you never attempted to contact her, not once in five years?"

Leaning forward, Klaus set his glass on the sturdy table and ran a hand through his hair. "I gave her my word that I never would."

"I know that. But if, as you said, you haven't moved on from her, how do you bear it? We all know you're rather... _insistent_ when you want something, so I'm a bit surprised that you have not made a single move to win her over. It's not like you, not at all."

"I have made my move five years ago in setting her free, Stefan. It was what she needed, it still is, and I will not force her hand. You are her friend, and you know her. There is much that she is yet to discover about life, about herself and what it is she wants. Someday, she will know. And that will also be the day she will decide whether or not she can live with who I am. But whatever her choice, Stefan, one thing will never change. The place at my side is hers, and hers alone, no matter whether she chooses to occupy it or leave it vacant."

The younger Salvatore's eyes had widened over Klaus' last words. Now his voice softened, and he, too, set down his drink. "So we are dealing with another case of 'that kind of love never dies', then?"

_Yes, Stefan. We bloody well are._

Klaus rose and swallowed the remainder of his Scotch. He needed to leave, because no matter how good it felt to speak of Caroline, it also pained him, and he had no desire to spend the next few days attempting to bring that stupid yearning under control. The yearning that had not diminished by so much as one degree since she had left the safety of his arms back in the woods. He was briefly tempted to ask Stefan whether she was well and happy, and how her life in Chicago suited her, but whatever the younger Salvatore would tell him, it would haunt his dreams more than the images of her already did.

"Thanks for the drink, mate, and tell Damon to give the bloody wolves a wide berth for a few decades. Who knows, next time I might be in Bora-Bora and unable to save the day." He paused, and with trepidation in his voice, he added, "You will watch over her whenever you can, won't you?"

Stefan stood and looked him in the eyes, his gaze open and honest. "I've been doing that for the past five years, and I won't stop now, although I'm not doing it for you. She is an amazing woman, now more so than ever, and I have said goodbye to too many friends over the years to be keen on losing another."

It did not entirely calm his anxiety, but he was nonetheless grateful. Stefan was one of the most fiercely loyal men he had ever encountered, and Klaus knew that he could depend on Salvatore the Younger to rush to Caroline's aid should she ever need it. Inclining his head, he made his way to the door when Stefan's voice stopped him.

"Klaus."

"Yes?"

"I would not usually do this, but I owe you a debt today, so let me give you three little presents."

Turning back to face the other man, Klaus frowned. _Beware of Greeks bearing gifts._ "I am all eager excitement," he said wryly, wariness filling him.

"First. You wrote Caroline a letter five years ago. It might be of interest to you that she carries this letter with her. Always."

His heart began to pound like an African tom-tom drum. She... had kept his letter? And she had it with her still?

"Second. She has had dozens of opportunities to travel abroad, but she turned them all down. Interpret that as you will."

Now his stomach seemed to do a somersault, unable to cope with the sweet sensation that flooded it. _I'll take you. Wherever you want. Rome? Paris? Tokyo? _He had no time to revel in the knowledge that she had let no-one else begin to show her the world, as Stefan spoke again.

"Third." There was a lengthy pause. "Not that she would ever say it aloud, but as you said, I know her, and... she misses you."

Everything inside him began to scream her name, and it was all he could do to suppress the impulse to crush Stefan in a bear hug the likes of which the world had never seen before. Who cared if she would haunt his dreams? Who cared that he would be back to sleepless nights over visions of her face? She _missed _him. Caroline missed him as he missed her.

_A small glimpse of your not-lost paradise, Niklaus. That should keep you afloat for a few more years._

His face split into a wide beam as he examined Stefan's eyes, again not finding any traces of falsehood.

"Thank you, mate. That means... Anyway, thank you."

"One more thing. I thought you ought to know that I meant to tell you at the time, Klaus, but... well... I am truly sorry about your daughter."

"So am I."

* * *

When Caroline looked up, it was dark outside. With a groan, she glanced at her watch. Seven. Seven? How could it be seven already? It had been three only ten minutes ago! She had been working on this presentation for four straight hours, without taking so much as a coffee break. And would, as usual, not hear a single word of gratitude from her boss. It was something she was used to by now, a day-to-day reality, but it had taken her two years to reach a state where she no longer worried about whether or not her supervisor approved of her work. Or took the credit for what Caroline had done. She liked the job, the pay was good, and she adored Chicago, so her boss's lack of appreciation was only a minor nuisance, and after all, lack of appreciation was old news to her.

After graduating from Whitmore, Caroline had moved straight to the Windy City where she had interviewed and been accepted for the position of Assistant Marketing Manager at a large airline. At first, she had been nervous about leaving her friends and her home behind, but thinking about it had made her realise that the status quo had gradually changed between her and her old posse. The only one she still truly related to was Stefan, and while she would always be there for them all should they need her, she could no longer empathise with Elena's love triangle drama the way she used to. Bonnie and Jeremy had moved away, starting a life together, Matt was gone, and she had lost Tyler's friendship once and for all when he had learnt about her and Klaus. _Good riddance._ She spoke to Stefan regularly, and whenever she returned to Mystic Falls, they hung out at The Grill for hours, talking about everything and nothing. He visited her in Chicago when he managed to pull himself away from Elena long enough, and she had even dragged him along when she went out with her new circle of friends and coworkers. Her life was busy and full and satisfying to the same degree it failed to give her real happiness. She loved Chicago's art, culture and nightlife, the shopping, her worldly new friends and how her job provided her with the opportunity to attend countless functions, conferences and events. There was a neverending supply of interesting, attractive guys to date, and Caroline had to admit to herself that the past two years had been perfect. She was leading the life she had always dreamed of.

But something was not right. No matter what she did, where she went and who she was with, a vast space inside her never ceased to feel only the slightest bit hollow. Caroline knew the reason as well as she had grown to know herself. A reason she still fought with all her might not to acknowledge. A reason she had pushed away as far as she could, filling her life with ever new people and activities to drown it. Except... except for the five minutes she allowed herself every night before she went to sleep - five minutes to read his letter, to let her mind bathe in the images of his face, to feel his arms around her as if it had been only yesterday. Five minutes to be his.

Only that she couldn't let herself.

Chasing the thoughts away, she logged off her workstation, grabbed her purse and turned off the lamp in her cubicle. When she was just about to leave, she suddenly felt her scalp beginning to prickle. _Vampire. There's a vampire. _Careful not to move too fast so as not leave incriminating footage on the security cameras, she turned and raised her head - and her heart gave a happy start at the sight before her.

"Stefan!" she squealed, dropping her stuff and racing over to pull him into a hug, ignoring the stares of the few coworkers still in the room at this late hour, "Why didn't you call? What are you doing here? Is Elena with you? When did you..."

He held up his hands in defeat. "Can you write the questions down? I'm worried I won't remember them all when you're finally done."

Caroline giggled. "Sorry, I'm just so happy to see you." Then her face fell, and her heart clenched uncomfortably. "It's not like you to drop by unannounced. Has anything happened?"

"Yes and no," he said. "No worries, everyone is perfectly fine, but I would like to talk to you. Are you free for dinner tonight?"

"I will be in a minute." Not that she would admit it, but she was actually glad to have an excuse to cancel her date with Pete, a colleague over from Corporate Communications who had been very persistent in asking her out. He was a nice enough guy, not bad-looking, funny and witty. But.

The phone call took her less than two minutes, and Caroline felt a little bad for lying to Pete about headaches and workloads and whatever else sprang to mind. When she was done, she shrugged into her jacket and collected her stuff. "Any special requests for dinner?"

Thoughtfully stroking his chin, Stefan said, "Can we order in? I would prefer to have this conversation in private, if you don't mind."

"Please don't tell me you're going to propose," she joked, hating how his words made her nervous. What was going on?

"Nope," he countered, a light grin on his face "a man should only ever propose when he knows that he is the only bidder on the market."

"Oh please. Pete? Not even close!"

He looked at her very intently. "No-one ever gets close, isn't that right?"

_I'm not so sure about that._

* * *

Two hours later, they were were comfortably perched on the couch in the little two-room apartment she was glad not having to share with anyone. Much as she loved to be around people, she had discovered that she required frequent time to herself, a need she had only ever unearthed when the compulsion to fight the loneliness by continuously surrounding herself with others had gradually waned over the past couple of years. The knowledge that she could live by herself, and _with _herself, was one of the greatest discoveries she had made, and the one she was most proud of.

They had ordered Chinese, opened a bottle of red wine and exchanged their news during dinner. Caroline's apprehension grew when she noticed how Stefan was trying to put her at ease while at the same time being obviously uncomfortable with whatever it was he wanted to talk to her about. When she poured the third round, he cleared his throat, his gaze almost apologetic.

"Look, Care, I still can't quite believe that I'm here to say what I'm going to say, and you know that it is not usually my style to get in the middle of something that is none of my business to begin with. Even less so in this particular case. I know that you've asked me never to talk about this again, and I promised to, but I'm afraid I'll have to break that promise."

_Oh no. Please, no! Not... Klaus._

"Don't go there, Stefan. I've made you give me your word for a reason. Please."

"And what reason is that?"

_It hurts to think about him. It hurts to think about him living the high life in New Orleans, which is why I blocked out any news of him from the very start. Any at all. It hurts to know that not a day goes by that I don't remember how heartbreakingly good it felt to be with him. And what hurts the most is that I can't seem to find a way to get over myself._

She said none of that. "You know why. I made a mistake, once, and I want to forget all about it. Remember how Tyler reacted? That's how everyone sees me after what I've done, and I just want to erase it from my memory."

Stefan shook his head with a vehemence that surprised her. "Tyler is an idiot. Care, none of us sees you like that, and I believe you know it. You just have to look at your friends. Elena fell in love with me, a ripper who killed dozens of people for the sheer fun of it, she fell in love with my brother who is almost as much of a baddie as Klaus. Damon and I both fell for Katherine who has never been a little angel, we both had a tryst with Rebekah - and even Matt, who can really not be compared to any of us, spent an entire summer with her. And a weekend as recently as last month, while we're at it. So don't hide behind what you believe anyone thinks of you." His voice softened, and his face relaxed visibly. "You're talking to me, Care. I'm your best friend, and I know you. So tell me the truth."

A dry burning set in behind her eyes as everything she had bottled up for such a long time demanded to be released. She looked at Stefan for a very long time, fighting a bitter battle with herself at whose end she buried her head in her hands and whispered, "I can't forget him, Stefan. God knows I've tried, and I still do, every day. But I'm helpless. He crawled under my skin and he won't get out, and I just can't live with that. I won't repeat the whole everything-horrible-he's-done sermon. I've come to the point where I know that there is more than just black and white to everything, even to Klaus Mikaelson. But still... I have no idea what he's done over the past years, if he's still terrorising the entire western hemisphere while turning his child into a younger version of him and..."

The look on Stefan's face stopped her mid-sentence. "Care, his daughter died a few minutes after she was born, didn't you know that? Her heart failed."

Everything inside her turned to ice. "W-What?" she stuttered, suddenly unable to breathe.

_'But I will do everything in my power, Caroline, to protect my unborn child. This child is another miracle, no matter under what circumstances it was sired. It is and will always be a part of my life.'_

They had merely been written words, but his connection with his child had shone through every letter.

_Oh God, Klaus! I'm so, so sorry! I should... I wish I had been there for you._

"How did he take it?" she asked tonelessly, trying in vain to bring her shaking voice under control.

Cocking his head to one side and taking a sip of his wine, Stefan said, "He didn't wipe out the planet, if that's what you're asking."

Caroline hesitated. "No, that is not what I'm asking. How did he cope? Is he better now?"

There was a small smile playing around the younger Salvatore's lips. "Damon saw him a couple of times in New Orleans over the years, and we've heard a few things from Rebekah. It broke his heart more thoroughly than she or anyone else would have predicted, but he held it together. There was quite some hard partying - when Damon returned after his first trip, he was hungover for days - but he hasn't embarked on a killing spree or anything of the sort. No more than usual, that is. He seems... fine now."

"How do you know?"

"He was in Mystic Falls a few weeks ago."

Her eyes widened. "But..."

Stefan held up a hand. "It was my doing. Damon got into werewolf trouble again."

She snorted, shaking her head. "It's a bit of a pattern with him, isn't it?"

"Tell me about it. So I called Klaus and asked him to come, and believe it or not, he didn't hesitate for a second. His only question was whether you were there. He seemed extremely uncomfortable to be breaking the word he had given you."

Her voice was trembling, as were her knees. "So what happened?"

"He saved Damon, and we had a little chat. About Elena, Damon and myself. About you. And him."

Caroline's insides seemed to turn into hundreds of heavy little knots that tied and untied in a matter of seconds. "What did he say?"

"I won't repeat the entire conversation, but bottom line is that I understood something I've had my doubts about until now. He has done something for you that I myself am incapable of doing for Elena, Care, at least not wholeheartedly - he has truly let you go, with no guarantees, no security net and no agenda whatsoever." He paused. "He's putting you ahead of his heart's desire, and that is unprecedented, at least for as long as I've known him."

In addition to the stupid knots in her stomach, her mind was beginning to spin. Caroline dug her nails into her palm, trying to shake off the daze. "Just out of curiosity, Stefan - why are you here, playing cupid for Klaus of all people?"

"That's not what I'm doing. Don't forget that I'm_ your_ friend, not his. I've watched you, Caroline, and while you have settled very well into your life, I can't help but see that something is holding you back from truly being who you are and living your life the way you should. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Been there, done that. And as your friend, I'm telling you that you will need to confront the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, and I'm here to make sure that you will a) do that and b) do it knowing all variables to the equation."

She jumped off the couch and began to pace the room with jerky, nervous steps. Stefan was asking her to go to Klaus? _Stefan?_ The guy whom Klaus had forced to turn off his humanity, whom he had turned back into the ripper Stefan had fought so hard to subdue, who had had to defend the love of his life from the Original on more than one occasion? A small voice inside her head whispered, _and the guy who repeatedly saved Stefan's brother from certain death, the last few times free of charge, the guy who saved Stefan, Elena and yourself from a bunch of vengeful witches... _No, it didn't help if she threw everything Klaus had and hadn't done onto the scales. Stefan was one of the most decent people she had ever met, and if he did not scream bloody murder at the idea of her seeking out Klaus to work out their... _pending issues_, then who was she to doubt his intentions?

_You don't want to doubt them because you have been forever waiting for an excuse to go and see him, haven't you?_

The truth was that Klaus' prediction had been accurate. Caroline had kissed a hefty number of guys over the past years, and had even taken it further with a few of them. It had been nice, but whenever she closed her eyes, all she saw was him. All she felt were his hands. All she wanted was to be in _his _arms. One of the men she had dated had been an executive of a global corporation, insanely handsome, cultured, intelligent and a beautiful kisser. She had fought like a lioness to fall in love with him, desperate to prove to herself that she stood a chance to eventually be happy with someone who was not Klaus Mikaelson, but in the end, she had continued to read his letter every night and to have her dreams haunted by pictures of his face. Much as she longed to, she couldn't go to him. If she did, she would fall.

"Stefan, I've just told you that I can't forget him as it is. Seeing him again doesn't seem like the best idea to move oblivion forward."

"Stalling doesn't move anything forward, either, and as he will never come to you, Care, it is for you to seek him out. For yourself, for your peace of mind. And you will only have a chance at finding that if you are honest with yourself and face whatever comes of seeing him again. One way or the other."

She halted, and her eyes sought her friend's. "What if it turns out to be the latter?"

Stefan sighed. "Then we will live with that. All of us. I won't lie to you - it will be hard to get used to the thought, but it's not impossible. Klaus is still Klaus, although I have to admit that I haven't found a satisfactory answer to the old question as to what it is that makes him worse than many of us. Let me make things a little easier for _you_, though. Whatever your decision, I promise you that you will never, ever lose me as a friend. I will never think less of you for making a choice. Either choice. I would only question your sanity if you stayed in this vacuum for the next few decades, living a half-life because the aforementioned gorilla keeps stomping through your mind and you can't kick him out."

For a moment, she let herself be filled with the warmth of friendship, marvelling in the long way the two of them had come since their first encounter back in Mystic Falls. "I love you, Stefan. Have I ever told you that? And now I don't want to hear any more of this. I want to get wasted, and I know just the perfect place. Come on."

They had a wonderful time at a bar in a side street off North Michigan, staying until they were kicked out in the wee hours of the morning. Both of them were a little tipsy... _downright drunk_... when they arrived at Caroline's apartment. Stefan hugged her tightly, kissing her cheeks.

"You'll do what's right for you, Care, and that's all you have to think about. What's right for _you._ It's your life, and you don't owe anybody anything. Put yourself first in this scenario."

Hanging her head, she nodded, all of a sudden feeling beyond miserable. How could she ever make this decision? She knew it was what a teenager would ask, but she couldn't help herself. "What would you do, Stefan? If you were in my shoes?"

He looked at her for a long moment, a light smile on his face and a world of understanding in his eyes. "When the moment arrives, you will know. Try not to agonise too much over it." There was an almost unnoticeable pause before he added, "But apart from however things turn out in the end... if I were you, Care... I would start by getting myself a passport."

* * *

THREE MONTHS LATER

The skies had opened their floodgates earlier that afternoon, and the rain had not stopped since. The streets of the Vieux Carré shimmered like the ice skating rinks in one of those old Sonja Henie films, the trees seemed to groan under the weight of the wet foliage, and all outdoor life had apparently ceased to exist. The Quarter's bars and restaurants were packed, with Rousseau's being no exception, and Klaus and Elijah had had to compel a pair of Italian tourists to vacate their seats at the bar. Elijah had only just returned from a trip to Spain where he had sold a mansion they had owned near Seville and that they had not used in over a century. Upon his arrival, he had insisted on a few drinks in town, ignoring Klaus' halfhearted protest and dragging him to their usual haunt. For once, Klaus did not feel like noise and crowds and the usual throng of grovellers, but he had missed his brother, and although he did not say a word, he was relieved to have Elijah back. However hard it was to admit, his older sibling gave him a sense of stability, and he was secretly grateful for how his brother had not left his side for months after his daughter's death. And later. The irony was not lost on him - where the arrival of a new family member had given them all hope to return to what they had once been, it had ultimately been her loss that had welded the Mikaelson siblings together. He hated to acknowledge the fact that once the three of them had begun to stand on the same side, he had achieved successes he would not have been capable of accomplishing on his own. Lasting successes. When they were not busy betraying, daggering or mistrusting each other, the Mikaelsons were not to be beaten.

Elijah ordered a new round of drinks while Klaus stared somewhat sullenly at the stately collection of bottles. His mind wandered to his brief Mystic Falls visit a few months ago. Damon had healed quickly, stopping by New Orleans a couple of weeks later, mentioning that Stefan had gone up to Chicago to see Caroline. The longing had ignited in him like a flame, as it always did on those rare occasions her name rose in conversation, but he had made a conscious effort to merely concentrate on the fact that Stefan was looking after her as he had vowed to do, something that should give him if not happiness, then at least some degree of contentment. And yet, Klaus felt inexplicably downcast as of late, and tonight's boisterous crowd did nothing to alleviate his gloom.

"Hey Klaus," a booming voice sounded from behind him, "do you have a minute?"

He turned on his stool to find Didier leaning against a pillar, a vampire who had joined his ranks a few months ago after leaving Savannah following a severe fight with Marcel. His former protégé had left New Orleans sixteen months into Klaus' reign after the Original had nearly killed Marcel during a bitter fallout over how the city was to be run. At the very last moment, he had stopped himself from tearing the younger vampire's heart out, but he had finally understood that there was not enough room for the two of them, and if it was not his wish to eventually kill Marcel, the other man would have to leave town for good. From what Klaus gathered, Marcel was working hard on building himself a new realm in Savannah; Elijah had voiced some concerns, but Klaus had decided to let things take their course for the time being. He had some solid connections in Savannah and would learn of any irregular activities timely enough to react.

"What is it, mate?" he asked now, glass in hand and scrutinising Didier.

"Well, ah, I know you said that there was to be no more discussion on the matter, but can I ask you again..."

"No, you can't. You said it yourself - case closed. I am not reconsidering, and if you value your head on your shoulders, you will not raise the topic again." His voice lowered to a snarl. "Have I made myself abundantly clear, or will additional argumentation be required?"

Didier paled only the slightest bit, but he held his ground. "Klaus, I..."

Faster than a bullet, Klaus stood in front of the younger vampire and, in an even quicker move, broke his left wrist. "Make one sound, and you will find yourself joining your friend. Out. Now. This conversation is over."

His face a grimace of pain and anger, Didier whirled around and pushed his way through the crowd without looking back.

"I do not like him," Elijah commented quietly when Klaus returned to his chair, "he means trouble. You might indeed want to consider sending him to join that scum in The Garden he so incessantly pleads for, at least for some period of time."

"Should he trespass on my patience again, I will." Klaus sipped his Scotch, his eyes returning to the bottles. He felt like smashing each and every single one of them. "So how did you find Seville?"

"Still enchanting, although I sometimes do feel like beheading whoever it was that brought up the unnerving fashion of blending modern architecture into old cities of timeless beauty." Out of the corner of his eye, Klaus saw his brother's probing gaze on his face. "Would you mind telling me what it is that bothers you, Niklaus?"

"I do not know what you are talking about. I am perfectly fine."

"Then you and I have a very diverging definition of 'fine'. Your mood has been dismal all evening for no obvious reasons, and I can only hope it is not directly correlated to my return."

That finally made Klaus give a wry smile. "Worse things have happened to me, brother. Not many, though."

"I sincerely hope so." Elijah grinned and turned around to let his eyes wander over the crowd, and for a while, a comfortable silence ensued. Klaus' thoughts drifted, pursuing random ideas, abandoning them a heartbeat later, shifting back and forth between memories and what lay ahead of him. New Orleans... one of his favourite cities, and now his home. He had been so certain that ruling this dark town would put his restless soul at ease, and while he enjoyed the current climate of peace and downright prosperity, he could not help but ask himself whether his recent bout of moroseness was nothing other than an expression of boredom. His thousand years had consisted of war, fugue and constant motion, making the past five years by far the longest period he had ever spent in one place. He currently had no battles to win, no upheavals to rein in and not much else to do than keeping his people in check, which was not even an effort. So he would have to find himself something to keep his mind and time engaged, and soon.

He was just about to convey his thoughts to Elijah when his older sibling's head jerked up and a slow, subdued smile spread on his face. "I could be mistaken, Niklaus, but something tells me that your mood is about to either skyrocket or deteriorate to levels unknown."

"What do you mean?" Klaus frowned at his brother whose gaze was fixed on something behind him. Turning around, he followed the older Mikaelson's eyes, and from one moment to the next, the floor dropped from underneath him.

Caroline.

She was standing in the midst of the crowd, soaking wet as if she had walked in the deluge for hours, her eyes wide and almost... frightened. The rain had long since washed off all makeup she might have worn at some point, giving her face a glowing purity that stood out like a beacon in the midst of the partying humans and vampires. There was no motion he could detect as she stared at him, wordlessly, rooted to the spot. As was he. Emotions, thoughts and sensations... everything left him, making space for but one burning need - to yank her into his arms and bury his face in her neck, taste the raindrops on her skin and let his lips devour the delicate curve of her shoulder.

All sounds were muted, all colours but hers dimmed as his eyes roamed over her face. Gods, was she lovely! Even more so than his unrelenting memories had shown him, and he cursed himself for being at a complete loss as to what he was supposed to do. Or say. He could not very well drop to his knees and beg her never to leave him again, or tear off her clothes and spend the next few weeks buried in her, despite those things being exactly what his stupid, lovesick heart told him to do.

And then his every thought became obsolete as she made the floor disappear from under him again when her trembling voice whispered one single word.

"Tokyo."

Klaus knew that his mouth had dropped open, but he no longer cared. He rose from his stool, standing stock-still while he tried to find a trap, a clue for her playing a practical joke on him, or for this being nothing but another of those haunting dreams that had been his pleasure and his torture for so long. But her eyes spoke a different language. There was fear, anticipation, joy, confusion, and above all, doubt. She had no idea whether what she was doing was right, but she was willing to find out. At. Very. Long. Last.

_Niklaus. It is now or never._

It was Elijah's calm and steady voice that finally brought him to his senses. "Go, brother. Do not think. I will take care of everything else, you have my word. Just go."

He cast a brief look at his older sibling before he nodded and returned his gaze to the slender, drenched, unspeakably beautiful woman in front of him, an almost shy smile on his face.

"Shall we?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello Dearies,**

**as ever, I thank each and every one of you for your lovely, wonderful and, above all, highly motivating reviews! You're really giving me such a boost, I can't even begin to describe it! I only wish I had the time to write more stories, one can seriously grow addicted to your amazing comments! ;) I would also like to take the opportunity and thank everyone who has favourited, followed or quite simply read the previous chapters. Just... THANK YOU! :)  
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**All right then, final installment is up, and again, my special thanks to DiabolicalBowlerHat... I just LOVE your feedback! XXX  
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** Also, as you may have noticed, I changed the rating to M. ;)**

**I so hope that all of you who gave the previous two chapters so much support will also like this one. Please enjoy, and once again - I am honestly grateful to every last one of you, more so than I could ever say.  
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**Much love**

**Sybille**

**XXX**

* * *

It had been a week from heaven.

Tokyo took her by storm, in a way she never thought possible. Her first impulse, when after months of tossing and turning and hysterics she had finally decided to follow Stefan's advice, had been Paris. New Orleans was out of the question - it was his home turf, and Caroline wanted to be on neutral territory, so neither Mystic Falls nor Crescent City would do. Paris seemed like a logical choice, given that it was one of the places she had been dying to see ever since she had been a little girl, but after another sleepless night, she had settled on Tokyo. Rationally dealing with the eight hundred pound gorilla, as Stefan had so aptly put it, wasn't prone to be a very successful feat in the city of love, where every corner of every street screamed 'romance', where the light was pink and music lingered in the air at all times. What she had not anticipated, however, was that romance had nothing to do with buildings, rivers and lights - to her chagrin, Tokyo had turned out to be the most romantic place she had ever visited.

Because she was visiting it with someone who made her see the beauty of everything, even of those elements that at first sight did not even seem overly beautiful.

She had expected something along the lines of a car and chauffeur, like the one that had brought them from Narita Airport to their downtown hotel, but to her astonishment, Klaus had insisted on public transportation and walking. He explained that Tokyo was a city that had to be discovered on foot, as otherwise, one missed out on the thousands of little things that constituted the Japanese capital's true charm. And charming it was. It had taken Caroline half a day to fall hopelessly in love with the fascinating fusion of old and new, an attraction that had steadily grown over the week they had spent in the city. In the shadows of towering skyscrapers, she found tiny streets lined with what looked like age-old speciality shops of all shapes and forms, wooden houses with microscopic gardens, little shrines and temples. Right next to the blaring loudspeakers and blinking neon lights of one of the hundreds of crammed electronics shops in the outlandish Akihabara district, she had seen weathered stone steps that led up to a temple so small that no more than one person could fit in at a time. Lights, colours and sounds were everywhere, but only a few yards beyond a crowded main street, there was suddenly peace and quiet. To her utter amazement, the combination of tradition and modernity, while sometimes bizarre and absurd, worked to perfection in this town of a million twists. Klaus had laughed when her jaw had dropped at the sight of an old woman in a kimono, sitting on a bench in front of her house, a bonsai tree on her lap, rusty scissors that probably dated from before World War I in her right hand - and an iPad in her left.

Geez, and all those restaurants! Caroline had shaken her head, muttering that she would probably die of starvation because of her sheer inability to make a choice. When she had moved to Chicago, she had quickly learned that there was more to Japanese food than sushi. But while sushi places could be found at virtually every second street corner in Tokyo, there was such a variety of other dishes, tastes and regional specialities that she asked herself just how anyone could ever keep track of the Japanese cuisine. According to Klaus, statistics said that Tokyo offered eighty thousand eateries, not counting street vendors, and at the end of day three, Caroline was sure that they had visited most of them. Nightlife, too, was of a mind-boggling variety, and she had the time of her life bar-hopping in this exotic town. Klaus seemed to always know where to take her to make her mouth pop open again and again. He had very quickly understood what it was that she liked in bars and restaurants and made a point of showing her places that were absolutely not what she expected. While it did sometimes pull her out of her comfort zone for moments at a time, it expanded her mind and broadened her taste. She understood what he was doing... and she loved it.

For some reason, there was an unspoken understanding not to touch on the infamous gorilla - and not to touch each other. Not once had they kissed, let alone made love. They slept in separate rooms and carefully kept their distance - apart from those fleeting moments when Klaus took her hand. It happened whenever she threatened to be overwhelmed by a new impression, something he seemed to have a built-in radar for. On their first evening, they had stood on the observation deck of the Kenzo Tange-built Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Darkness had already descended on the city, and the world was suddenly filled with billions of iridescent lights that reached all the way to the horizon. It was like an ocean of light in a universe of darkness, and Caroline had been about to grab a handrail for support, feeling her knees go weak at the monumental sight, but Klaus had been faster. He had not said a word as his hand had surrounded hers, warm and reassuring. Thus protected, she had finally invited the view to flood her, taking it all in and allowing her knees the weakness they demanded. He had not caressed her hand or made any other move, he had just held it, and the perfection of the moment still echoed in her system.

But what engaged her mind the most was how they were having _fun._ Away from their history, from the places that were tainted for them both, a weight seemed taken from their shoulders. They were tourists, enjoying the sights and sounds of one of the greatest cities in the world, and there was no-one to judge her, no-one to condemn her for what she was doing. What _they _were doing. For when he was not busy explaining what they were looking at, talking about Japan's history or discussing artifacts at Tokyo's National Museum, Klaus could be downright playful, and there were moments when she didn't quite recognise him. One afternoon, they had visited a park when a tall but nonetheless young dog had escaped its owner, racing across the lawn, headed straight towards Klaus. Caroline had assumed it had something to do with the Alpha Wolf thing. To her eternal astonishment, the Big Bad Hybrid had turned into a boy for a few moments, his laughter resounding through the park as he scampered about with the giant puppy. When he had looked up into her face, she had all but recoiled at the genuine delight in his eyes. For a split second, she had closed her face to him, out of old habit, trying to mantle her feelings with disdain. He had seen it, and the bitter disappointment on his features had almost broken her heart. She hadn't apologised, but half an hour later, when they were passing a little bridge crossing a pond, she had wordlessly taken his hand. There had been an almost indiscernible squeeze, and they had walked on in silence.

Then there was that incident at Mitsukoshi, one of Tokyo's most distinguished department stores, where she had virtually never stopped squealing, making him roll his eyes, but she hadn't missed how his lips had constantly twitched. The perfume display had almost made her faint, and she didn't know where to look first. At some point, an elegant, golden bottle of a scent called 'Amouage' had engaged her interest. She had grabbed the tester, spraying some of the ridiculously expensive perfume behind her ear. It had smelled heavenly... and a tad provocative. Caroline had not been above beckoning for Klaus to take a whiff. He had stepped behind her, and with a gesture so tender it turned her limbs into pure jelly, brushed her hair to one side. His cheek had touched hers before before he lowered his face to her neck in slow motion, making her close her eyes and let her emotions run amok for a second. Even more so when he had suppressed a low gasp.

_'No,'_ he had whispered. _'It messes with me, Caroline. It makes me want to make love to you until you are in pieces even more than I already do.'_

They had stood like that for a minute, leaning into each other, listening to one another's thundering heartbeat until Caroline finally turned to look at him. His eyes were clouded, his face tense with restrained need. Without hesitation, she took one of the wrapped boxes, gave him a rebellious look and marched over to the cash counter. She had not worn the fragrance yet, but every morning and every night, she opened the bottle to smell it and recall his husky words... and the promise behind them.

And yet, they did not touch.

Now, after a week of amazing city life with thousands of new impressions every day, they were on their way to a tiny village at the foot of Nyutou Mountain, located in northern Japan. It was one of the oldest hot springs in the country, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forests, small rivulets and little else. Klaus had described it as one of the most traditionally Japanese places, and Caroline was as excited to see it as she was nervous about the conversation they would urgently need to have and had already postponed for much too long. The sparks that had been flying between them were gradually turning into veritable fireworks, and they would have to act on them soon - one way or the other.

_As if there were two ways to act on them!_

This long train ride from Tokyo was the first opportunity she had to truly think about the past days, and about what they meant.

What had been a mere suspicion over the years their paths had not crossed was now a fact, and she knew she would do well to face it: With Klaus by her side, the ever-present hollow inside her vanished. A couple of days after their arrival, when they had taken a side trip to a seaside town named Kamakura that was famous for its forty-three foot Buddha, Klaus had been in the midst of a lengthy explanation on an ancient archive of Buddhist sutras they were looking at when realisation had hit her. She was completely and utterly focused on the _contents _of his explanation, on the details of the archive before her, and on the questions she wanted to ask him about it. She was _interested._ The nagging urge to constantly move, to look at a thousand different things at once without ever _seeing _them, to find yet another and another distraction to soothe her wandering mind was gone. Nothing was missing now, and she could finally cut through all the crap to find the time and the desire to truly absorb the world. And there was no kidding herself about what had been missing before that had made this kind of focus impossible.

So if this meant that her life was incomplete and restless without him, then the thought was disturbing, to say the least. Caroline felt herself struggling to reject the conclusion, although her more mature side was very adamant about how it was the wiser path to accept and find out how to live with it going forward. Stefan had spoken of a half-life, and while she preferred to think of it as three quarters of a life, there was no denying that over the past week, her life had, for the first time ever, felt complete.

_Apart from dying to tear off his clothes about fifty times a day, you mean?_

_Oh, shut up!_

The Klaus she had been roaming Tokyo with was the one who had made love to her in the woods back then, the guy who burst with excitement, dreams and ever new plans, and he had added to that by showing her a man who deeply enjoyed sharing his considerable inner wealth and found no greater pleasure than accompanying her on the journey to discovery of what it was that she liked and disliked. He was also a man whose heart she knew she could break with but one word, and the feeling of power that knowledge gave her was almost indecent. She had taken advantage of it in the past, like the day she had, in full awareness of what it would do to him, told him how people who did terrible things were just terrible people. But she had long since passed that stage. Whatever happened in the future, one thing she knew for certain - she would never abuse her position of power again, no matter how much he may come to deserve it at times. No, she corrected herself, he sometimes deserved to pay for what he did, but not with heartbreak. That was no payment, it was cruelty. No-one deserved to have their heart broken as a revenge for something they did. What was more, Caroline felt that even if she tried, she couldn't. Not anymore. She had _seen _him now. Seen Klaus for who he was, for who he had never ceased to be underneath it all. Everyone knew that she was the one capable of bringing those sides of him to light that had been interred for so long. The question was, could she continue down that road? Was it what she wanted? Was _he _what she wanted?

_Caroline freaking Forbes. Doesn't the answer to that lie in all those times you've read and reread his letter? In how you've not managed to shake him during five years of radio silence? In the way sex with him spoilt you for anybody else? In the way you feel like you could singlehandedly win World War III when he takes your hand? In how you cried yourself to sleep over thoughts of what he must have gone through when his daughter died? Think, girl. _

"We are here," his voice abruptly interrupted her inner monologue. He, too, had been silent during most of the ride, and Caroline suspected he had had to face his own inner audit.

When they left the diminutive train station, a black sedan was waiting with a liveried driver who bowed, silently held open the doors for them and stowed their bags once they were seated. Geez, these Originals would have door-to-door service even in the wilderness! She suppressed a grin at the absurd image of Klaus and Elijah hopping off a ship in Antarctica, wearing Armani and Ray Bans and being met by the liveried driver of a midnight black snowmobile. Well, who was she kidding - that probably _was _how it would happen. It was not a long drive to Tsuru no Yu, and Caroline was secretly sorry when they arrived, as she would have loved to just drive through the breathtaking scenery for hours. The resort was not very big and traditional in the extreme, all ancient woods and weathered stones. It even smelled ancient, but in a pleasant way. No other patrons were to be seen, something that made her frown.

"It's not very crowded, is it?" she demanded, straining her ears for human sounds but coming up empty except for some remote kitchen noises.

"It might have something to do with the inconsequential fact that I rented the entire place," Klaus retorted, biting his lip to hide a grin.

"You did _what_?"

"Something wrong with your hearing?"

She had to giggle at that. "Umm... why would you do that?"

He took a couple of steps until his face was mere inches from hers. "Because, my lovely Caroline, the traditional way to enjoy Japanese hot springs does not involve the wearing of any kind of garments. And I am certain that you would dislike other men staring at your divinity of a naked body almost as much as I would."

_Naked? We will bathe in the nude? Together?_

And that thought was all it took to turn her into a bundle of nerves.

* * *

Apparently, it was another tradition to submerge in the baths after a lengthy Japanese dinner. It was such fun to try all the mysterious dishes, and every single one turned out to be beyond delicious. Klaus had patiently pointed out to her what it was that she was eating until she told him to stop and just let her enjoy the food. With a raised brow, he hid behind his glass and simply said, "As you wish."

Two courses later, they were served a staggering number of little plates and bowls filled with entirely undefinable stuff. Caroline didn't want to ask him now, even though she was burning with curiosity, and so she just put on a blasé expression and tucked in. Halfway through the bowls, she arrived at two little white balls garnished with scallions and marinated in an indescribably fantastic sauce. After a couple of bites, she no longer cared whether she was about to lose face.

"My God, this is amazing! What _is _that?" she asked, pleasure written all over her face as she took another bite.

Klaus raised his glass, and with a perfectly straight face, he said, "Cod fish testicles."

It took her less than a second to spit the bite back into the bowl and give a shriek. "No way! I'm eating the freaking balls of a fish? Yuck! Wait a minute, you're joking, right? Fish don't even have these things, do they?"

He inclined his head. "Sorry to disappoint you, my love, but they actually do. Please do not tell me you not only skipped your geometry classes, but also biology?"

"We didn't exactly get into that much detail! Geez, you could have said something!" She took a large gulp of Sake, shuddered - and simply couldn't help but return his wise-ass grin.

For the remainder of the dinner, Klaus reverted to explaining what they were eating, although the fish balls remained the pinnacle of their meal, and more than once, Caroline caught him hiding a loving smile at her reactions. When they were done, it was past ten, and as they were in the middle of a remote mountain area, both darkness and silence were absolute. As were the jitters that had captured her from the beginning of the evening and that had continuously mounted.

"Shall we meet outside in five minutes?" Klaus asked quietly. "You will find a Yukata in your room, a special cotton kimono that is worn on the way to the baths."

Caroline merely nodded and with shaky steps, made her way to her room, covered in traditional tatami mats. In her absence, her bed had been set on the floor, something Klaus had talked about earlier, but she had no patience to take a closer look now. She found the bright white Yukata neatly folded next to the makeshift bed. Very slowly, she stripped off her clothes and desperately tried not to care that her fingers were shaking so badly that she could hardly tie the belt that came with the garment. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to calm down and commanded her feet to move. Her hand was already on the door when her eyes fell on her bag of toiletries. On an impulse, she opened it to pull out the shiny golden bottle of Amouage, and after a brief hesitation, she sprayed it behind her ears, onto her wrists... between her breasts. And she had no idea what the hell it was that she was doing.

_Yes, you have. Come on._

When she stepped out of the wooden main building and into the ice-cold night air, she was immediately taken aback by the sheer beauty of what lay before her eyes. The various pools were framed in ancient rocks, and subdued lights were illuminating the water. From it, wafts of mist rose into the pitch-black skies, and the quiet sounds of gurgling water seemed to come from all sides. Bamboo, trees and bushes surrounded the area, and for an instant, Caroline wondered if she would ever see anything so excruciatingly perfect again.

"Lovely, is it not?" a low voice came up behind her.

Klaus was wearing a Yukata himself, albeit a dark blue one, and he looked the picture of ease. Although something inside her doubted he was as relaxed as he wanted to make her believe. And his next words confirmed her lingering suspicion.

"You are wearing that scent," he merely said after inhaling deeply, his tone strained. "Didn't I tell you..."

"It's cold," Caroline interrupted, "get into the water already."

He looked at her for a long moment, searching for something in her eyes. She took a step back and returned his gaze, fearless all of a sudden. Without taking his eyes off her, he shrugged out of the fabric, and she felt her lips part. _Talk about excruciatingly perfect. _God, he was... he looked even better than he had in her memories, his body hard and lean and sorely tempting. _So _tempting. So necessary. His eyes were still on her when he stepped into the shallow pool, the water reaching no further than his hips. Then he let himself sink into the spring, closing his eyes and submerging completely for a long while. Caroline understood. He was giving her the space to undress and hop into the pool without him looking at her, and it was that gesture, that unexpected sensitivity that finally cracked her open.

She waited until he surfaced, running a hand through his wet hair. His eyes softened when he saw her still standing on the wooden planks that led to the pools, and widened when she began to slowly undo the belt, letting it drop to the ground. Without a word, she opened the Yukata and slid it off her shoulders. Klaus rose and shook his head, once and as if in pain, and held out his hand. She waded into the water, momentarily distracted by how freaking _hot _it was, but once her fingers touched his, nothing else mattered.

"My love, whether or not you believe me... I have never wanted anything the way I want this, not even the first time around. I have missed you, Caroline, more than you could ever know. Gods, I..." Before she could speak or even think, his lips were on hers, and a ludicrous thought raced though her mind.

_I've come home._

Klaus kissed her with everything he was, she knew it, she felt it... she needed it as he did. There was despair in the way he crushed her against his chest, pain in the way his lips moved over hers, and fear in the fingers that were trembling when they took possession of her neck and shoulders. Without a warning, she felt the same fear rising inside her, making its way through her soul until she could all but taste it on her tongue - and that was when she saw everything as clearly as if it had been written into the skies with sparkling letters. This was her place. Here, in the arms of a thousand-year-old man who was as terrible as they got. And as right for her as no-one else would ever be. She was the one who right now sent this paralysing fear through their joined systems - the fear of choosing wrong. Of denying what they already were and could someday become.

_Would. Would become. _

Very gently, she placed her hands on his chest and nudged him only the slightest bit. Klaus reacted immediately and released her, his eyes so bursting with love, lust and terminal fear that Caroline's heart seemed to simultaneously die and explode with joy.

"Klaus," she breathed, letting all those feelings sneak into her voice that she had suppressed for so long, "I want you to put your fears aside, okay? Please."

"I am sorry, my love, but I can't. Not entirely. Yes, I want this, I want _you,_ with every fibre of my being, but some part of me cannot stop thinking of tomorrow. And the day after. Once I make love to you tonight, my beautiful girl, I will be lost for good, and whilst I am prepared to live with the consequences, I also fear them. It is hard to give up on something that for the first time in a thousand years makes you feel like a complete person."

Caroline closed her eyes to rein in the emotions that threatened to drown her. She had given herself five years to forget, to no longer care, to move on. And in those five years, she had only managed to entangle herself more and more in her feelings for Klaus. Not for a minute had she forgotten, she cared more than ever, and yes, she had moved on - towards this. Well. Time for a clean sweep.

"Why would you give up on it, then?" she asked, cupping his cheek and moving closer, feeling him tense.

"Because it is and will always be your choice, Caroline. I will stand back and accept your verdict, as ever, but that does not mean it will not tear me apart."

She leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his throat, shivering at his quiet moan. And at his honesty. When she retreated, she waited until he opened his eyes and locked them with hers. "Put your fears aside," she repeated, emphasising each word and staring at him until comprehension dawned on his face, followed by blatant disbelief. His eyes pierced her, and she had the unsettling feeling that he truly was staring into her heart. His voice was no more than a rasp when he finally spoke.

"Yes. I will."

With still shaking hands, Klaus pulled her naked body against his, lifted her up and made her wrap her legs around his waist. In less than a second, he had flashed them to the far end of the natural pool, where the light was weakest, sinking into the water until they were both submerged up to their shoulders. His eyes seemed to lose themselves in hers when his hand cupped her cheek and drew her face close. Closing her own eyes, Caroline let go of every thought, every doubt - of everything that was not Klaus, hot water, ice-cold night air, Klaus. Klaus. She felt his thumb trace her lower lip before he pulled it down, forcing her lips to part... and letting his mouth take possession of her. A low moan escaped her at feeling a burst of fire shoot through her body, heating her up in a way that put the hot spring water to shame. His tongue delved into her mouth, dancing with hers in the ancient, timeless rhythm of a man and a woman who were only just learning to wholeheartedly succumb to each other. It was a bone-deep kiss that conquered every last cell in her body, making her feel so suffused with everything erotic that for the first time ever, she allowed and encouraged the wild images of all those taboo, risqué and outrageous fantasies she had worked so hard to subdue all her life. Things a good girl didn't do. Things a good guy would never even think of.

_Thank Heavens he's not a good guy._

As if reading her mind, he broke the kiss and stared at her, panting, his eyes in flames. "I shall love you any way you want me to, my beautiful girl. Later. Now I just need to hear you scream, cry and pray my name."

"Words," she hissed, rolling her hips against his in the most provoking move she had ever made, "just empty words. Show me. Show me who you are... _Niklaus."_

She had no idea where that strange femme fatale behaviour came from, but she no longer cared when a malicious grin split his face, and in less than half a second, he whirled around and slammed her against the rock wall. "No. I'll show you who _you _are, Miss Forbes."

His mouth crashed down on hers again, and this time, there was nothing sweet or slow about his kiss. This time, he was out for her sanity. His lips plundered while his tongue moved in ways that all but made her mewl. Hot, unbearable desire raced through her, a lust that exploded when she felt his hands on her breasts, kneading, stroking, owning, making her arch her back to give his fingers more to explore. Without so much as a hint of hesitation, Caroline covered his hands with hers, forcing him to cup her breasts more firmly, to tease her nipples and to intensify his sweet, masterful torture. In a lightning-fast move, he reversed the positions of their hands - now she was the one touching her breasts while his hands were on hers, mercilessly using her own fingers to devour every inch of the sensitive skin. Her nipples had grown hard as granite, aching for more of their joint touch as he stopped their movement, spreading their fingers and lowering his head. The moment his tongue swished over her nipple, brushing her fingers in the process, she let her head drop against the rocks and groaned, a sound that she wasn't quite sure had really come from her. Klaus gave a knowing little grin and trapped her against the wall, no longer allowing her to move as his lips closed over her nipple. He let go of her hands to cup her breast, his fingers incessantly caressing her tender flesh while his tongue and his teeth sent her into a storm of little electric shocks with every lick, every bite... Her nipple felt raw and throbbing, and yet, Caroline did everything she could to push her breast deeper into his mouth, half-crazed by the outrageously indecent way he ravaged it. She locked his head against her skin with one hand and let the other glide to her free breast, imitating how his hand had moved over it earlier... until he pushed her fingers away, cupping her breast and letting his own hand play with it, mirroring the sinful movements of his tongue.

And then, without a warning, he hoisted her up onto the ledge of the pool, into the freezing air.

Before she could protest, he cast her a burning look, skimmed his hands along the insides of her thighs and pushed them apart, forcing her to place her hands on the ground behind her so as not to lose balance. His hands were still on her legs when he let his eyes wander very slowly from her face all the way down her naked body... to her centre. A flash of self-consciousness gripped her, but something in his gaze dissolved any shame she might have felt and brought her to the edge of commanding him not to make her wait any longer. The memory of the leaf-covered ground in Mystic Falls came out of nowhere, of his head between her legs and the way she had all but convulsed from pleasure. It had been...

"Oh my God!"

Klaus' lips were on her, his tongue moving over her sex in a languid, tantalising pattern. Time-tested, dizzying, perfect. It took him no more than two, three swishes of that diabolical tongue to make Caroline almost lose her mind. Her arms trembled, unable to hold her up any longer, and she dropped back onto the rocky ground. The onslaught of sensations was not from this world - the cold stone underneath her, the icy air on her body, the hot water washing around her feet that were still submerged in the pool... and his searing mouth doing unspeakable things to her. With every twitch of her hips, every shudder that went through her and every desperate sound she made, his moans grew louder and heavier, driving her beyond the boundaries of sanity and making her crave him with a violence she hadn't thought herself capable of. When his tongue finally... _oh, finally!_... flicked over her clit, rough and demanding, in a stark contrast to the softness of its previous motions, her back arched from the ground, her cry echoed from the darkness... and she came. So gloriously hard that she found no way of controlling the tremors that shook her body from head to toe. There was a fleeting realisation that Klaus didn't hold her down but let his mouth follow her every move, and the silly question whether gravity had just ceased to exist crossed her mind before she felt herself slowly beginning to descend back to Earth. The impossible explosion of lust turned into a vibrant glow, giving her a warmth that belied how she was lying naked in the cold. With effort, Caroline lifted her head to gaze down at Klaus, expecting him to pull her back into the water and into his arms. She could not have been more mistaken. His face rose for a moment, the victorious grin on it somehow complemented to perfection by the love shining in his eyes.

"It ain't over till it's over," he chuckled, tossing her a look that felt more like he was throwing her a gauntlet. "Sit up." There was nothing she could do, nothing she _wanted _to do, other than to obey his command. It had been just like that the first time around - no matter how she would never allow him to boss her around in life, she sure as hell melted with desire when he did it in bed. Not that they had ever seen an actual bed. So she did as he asked, feeling him pull her hips even closer to the edge until she was no longer really sitting on solid ground. Dangling was more like it. When she wanted to support herself on her arms, he merely shook his head.

"I loved to see you touching your breast, Caroline. Let me see it again." He sounded in full command of himself, but she had been at no loss to hear the slight edge to his voice.

Biting her lip, she cupped her breasts and began to stroke them, a little awkwardly at first, but after a moment, she remembered how she used to do just that in the privacy of her room, imagining they were his hands. The last time no more than a few days ago, in Tokyo. Her eyes on his, she began to touch herself more boldly, circling her nipples with her fingers, cupping her breasts fully again... and feeling ridiculously elated when she heard his breathing quicken. Without taking his eyes off hers, Klaus leaned forward and ran his tongue over her sex, making her gasp at her own reaction. She was still raw and a little hypersensitive, but the second his tongue touched her, all she wanted was more. And he knew. And showed no mercy. Where his lips and tongue had been soft and playful before, they were now on the warpath, bringing her an ecstasy that put to shame everything she had ever known about pleasure. Her own hands on her body, his mouth burning her through and through... it was all beyond her.

His name was all she could remember when she felt another climax approach, and the second she screamed it into the night, Klaus lifted her from the ground, holding her in midair for one incredible, delicious moment before pulling her against him and letting her sink into the hot water. The sudden change of temperature added to the combustion inside her, making her wrap herself around his body, hold on for dear life and quiver through what was pure, undiluted delirium. His arms were encircling her so securely that she knew not even a volcanic explosion would tear her from him now, and there was a slight tremor in his limbs, too. Caroline knew he _loved _this. Loved to see her come undone under him, to see the effect he had on her. Yet his next words couldn't have been more unexpected.

"My love," he whispered at her ear after pressing a tender kiss to her temple, "everything about you is magnificent, but you brought me to my knees with what you just did to me."

_What _I_ did?_

Her voice was hoarse, and she was still trembling when she said, "I didn't do a thing but scream your name. Hallucinations much?"

His light chuckle made her touch her lips to his neck. "The power of surrender is entirely underestimated, Caroline. You may believe that what you did was to hand over the reins, but the exact opposite is the case. You have me forever at your mercy with the uncompromising way you gave yourself to me."

Caroline's eyes remained closed, her head resting on his shoulder, when she let his words warm everything inside her and make her mind reel. How did he manage to still make her feel like the queen of the universe when she was writhing in pleasure underneath him?

_Got blinders on? He loves you. That's how he does it. _

And she wanted to see that love now. She wanted to see that no other woman had ever been or would ever again be capable of making Niklaus Mikaelson succumb to his feelings the way she did. She was ready to become as addicted to his surrender as he was to hers.

_'We're the same, Caroline.'_

She had no way of knowing where the sudden flash of memory came from, but it was only now that she saw with complete lucidity that he had been right. They were the same in what they wanted from each other, in what they needed. They were the same in their fear of rejection, of betrayal. And they were the same in their surrender.

_'I'll show you who _you_ are, Miss Forbes."_

She was his equal.

Never, not once in her life, had she felt as tough and strong as she did now that she was naked and exposed in this pool in northern Japan, holding the most powerful man on Earth, being held by him and finally fully understanding who she was.

Leaning back, she took his face in her hands and looked him in the eyes. He was silent for a long moment before a dazzling smile spread on his beautiful face, making his dimples dance. "Found out, have you?"

Her response took him by surprise. Using all her force, she crashed him into the wall and covered his mouth with hers, just as violently as he had earlier. Body, heart and soul - Caroline put everything she was into that one kiss, setting them both on desperate fire in a matter of seconds. When his arms wanted to come around her, she grabbed them and pinned them to ledge with all her might, knowing that she was no match for his physical strength but also sure that none of that mattered right now. Klaus gave a visceral groan and for all but one second, she felt his muscles twitch under her hands. It was new to him, this feeling of allowing someone to have their way with him, but an instant later, she felt him relax. Her heart broke into a gallop when she sensed that he was fighting for his own surrender... and sudden understanding lit up inside her. She could feel the power he wielded over her in giving himself into her hands like that. It was intoxicating.

Releasing his arms, Caroline let her lips wander down to his neck while her hands began to rediscover his lean, sinewy body, tracing his shoulders, his chest... and in the blink of an eye, her mouth was on his nipple. Klaus grabbed the ledge for support, and she felt a shiver run through him when her tongue and teeth began to play, in turns hard and soft, demanding and tender.

"Ah, Caroline... I love that... I love to feel your tongue on me."

_Really?_

Letting her instincts take over, she sank to her knees, her hand on his rock-hard length, and let her tongue run over its tip - just beneath the waterline. His cry was the loveliest sound she had ever heard, filled with greed, lust, and love. She couldn't help but react to the bolt of desire his voice had sent through her, giving in to her urge to do to him what he had done to her. Her lips could not get enough, her tongue tasted every inch of him, and she didn't give a damn about not being able to breathe in the water. Klaus' eyes were closed, he was almost hyperventilating, and with a deep satisfaction, Caroline saw small pieces of rock plunking into the water, so fiercely was he holding on to the wall. She felt him twitch under her ministrations, more and more so, but when she increased her tempo, he reached his limits.

She found herself slammed into the wall again, and his crazed eyes held hers hostage as she felt him hot, hard and beyond ready at her entrance. When he moved with unexpected tenderness, filling her inch by inch, she wound her legs around his hips and gave a long, soft moan at the beautiful fusion of desire and... _more._ Seeing his almost incredulous gaze sink into hers, she had to battle down a tear that threatened to escape. The first time, back in the woods, had been about pent-up desire, about lust, and even a bit about anger, but today was about something so much deeper and more meaningful that she found it unspeakably hard not to let herself be drowned by what he made her feel. When Klaus was fully buried inside her, he stopped moving, framing her face with his hands. His voice was like velvet when he sent her emotions into the most lovely chaos.

"What is it that you are doing to me, Caroline? What?"

Caroline closed her eyes and did nothing to suppress the single sob that made its way to the surface. "Klaus," she whispered, her feelings threatening to paralyse her, "I..."

He gently placed finger on her lips. "No. Do not say it. Not now. I only want to hear it if you truly mean it, my love. Not in the throes of desire, and not when you have just spent a week flooded by a world of new impressions."

_But... oh, right now, I can't think about why he's wrong._

And she had no more time to think, either. Klaus kissed her hard while his hips began to subtly roll against hers. He left her almost completely before thrusting into her again, very slowly, over and over. Her mouth opened as if to scream silent words at the incomparable sensation, and she interlocked her hands behind his neck, staring into the face that was so filled with feelings for her. And with boundless lust. At first, Caroline didn't even notice how his movements gained speed and force, but when the heat spread from her sex into her entire body, she began to suddenly burn like the fires of hell.

"Klaus," she heard herself beg incoherently, "you... oh... I want... _more!_"

"All of it," he hissed before he began to take her like a madman. She was slammed into the wall by the sheer power of his thrusts, but all of her welcomed each and every one. She held on to him, moving against him as if in despair as he made love to her in a way that defied reality. And she still wanted more. More of that hot, hard length inside her, more of his almost animal groans, more of the way all of this exceeded any dirty thought she had ever had. His thrusts seemed to grow faster and stronger with her every moan, and their eyes were unable to let go of each other. Caroline began to feel herself contract around him, trying to pull him in deeper, to have him melt into her, and she knew he could not only feel how close she was, he could see it on her face.

"Come with me," he ordered, his voice no more than a hoarse scratch, "Now. I need you to. I _need_ you, Caroline."

And that was all it took them both.

Klaus' inarticulate cry fused into hers as thoroughly as they drowned in each other, their joint climax storming through them with the devastation of an avalanche. Caroline could no longer hold herself upright and was about to fall back against the wall when his arms came around her and pressed her against his chest, all the while they were still moving in each other, shaking like leaves, unbelieving in the face of where they had just been together. Klaus' head dropped onto her shoulder, momentary exhaustion on his features, but he never failed to breathe soft kisses onto her skin while he was trying to gather his wits. She ran a hand through his hair, the other lovingly stroking his back, and she felt his hold tighten in response.

They remained like that for a very long while, basking in the afterglow of their lovemaking, and even more so in how they connected now. No words were necessary to make them realise that this was what they had truly been longing for - warmth, intimacy, the feeling of belonging. Something that deep down, Caroline knew they had both only ever found in each other, albeit for no more than minutes at a time. Her stomach seemed to give a little start when she heard him whisper her name against her shoulder, so quietly that she first thought she had imagined it. But the kiss he pressed to her skin was of an intensity that told her she had not been mistaken. It made her dizzy, and all of a sudden, she felt that she needed a break from the way she wanted to just pour out every last bit of tenderness she was capable of. From those feelings she knew were solid and real but she needed some more time to fully accept. So she gave a small chuckle and gently pulled on his hair.

"Can I ask you something?"

He seemed to sense the change in her mood and lifted his face, raising a quizzical brow, his expression neutral. But the hands on her back never wavered in their soft caresses. "By all means."

A mischievous grin split her face. "Do you think we will ever make love in an actual bed?"

"Until the bloody sun rises. Which is when we shall start all over again."

* * *

A ray of late afternoon sunlight fell through the wooden blinds, illuminating Klaus' sleeping face. A face so peaceful, so relaxed and content that Caroline could simply not stop staring. She had been awake for about half an hour now, and those thirty minutes had been spent memorising every detail of him. The way his hair was tousled after the countless times she had run her hands through it. The subtle but unmistakable smile on his face that hadn't wavered since she had awoken. His calm breathing that made his chest rise and fall, beckoning her to gently lay a hand on it. His arm around her waist, his fingers spread on her back, holding her securely even in his sleep. The way his entire body posture was aligned to hers. Caroline's sleep had been light, and whenever she had moved, she had semiconsciously felt him follow her motion. Nothing had ever made her feel so cherished and so utterly protected.

Nothing except the night that lay behind them.

He had lived up to his promise of making love to her - in a _bed_ - until the sun rose and then begin anew. Caroline felt a tremor run through her at the memories of what had transpired between them. It wasn't that she had had any inclination to hold back, but even if she had, Klaus would never have allowed her to. As unreservedly as he gave, he demanded to be given. He wanted her every pleasure and emotion, every secret desire she had never dared act out, and he took it all, only to make it his and return it to her, magnified to an extent that left no room for anything else. Caroline had never thought it possible, not in her wildest fantasies, that sex could be like this. Two ravenous bodies, complemented by two even more starved souls that had found each other in a manner too intense and beautiful for words. And apart from the gut-wrenching emotions, it had been insanely hot. Klaus had a way to turn sweet into dirty and dirty into sweet that Caroline thought with a lewd grin was more dangerous than anything one needed a firearms license for. Even now, when she should be beyond sated after countless hours of lovemaking, she sensed heat rise at the mere thought of feeling him so deep and perfect inside her again. Their lovemaking in the woods five years ago that had never left her thoughts for more than a few hours at a time, and that she had believed to be the best sex _anyone _had ever had, paled like a little fish pond against the vastness of the Pacific Ocean compared to what he had done to her last night. And during the better part of this day.

"Did I have anything to do with that smile?" a sleepy voice suddenly murmured at her ear. She chuckled, shook her head and buried her face in his shoulder, marvelling at how warm and lovely it felt. "Well then, why don't you let me rectify that?"

And without a warning, Caroline found herself flat on her back, her arms trapped in his steel grip, her thighs pushed apart... and his iron length filling her to the hilt. Her low cry echoed from the walls, and in less than a nanosecond, her legs were wrapped around his waist, pulling him even deeper inside her.

"Are you smiling for me yet?" he whispered, his voice weak with desire, a stark contrast to the vicious gleam in his eyes.

Caroline slowly circled her hips beneath him, making him give a shaky moan that went all through her system. "No," she breathed, challenge on her face, "and I have a feeling that I won't be for hours."

"That's my girl."

And just like that, they were lost in each other again.

* * *

They had not left the room for two straight days.

Whenever one of them made the halfhearted suggestion to go out for food, blood, or nothing in particular, they merely had to look at each other. Neither of them was yet prepared to face the world, and they did everything in their power to remain in their untainted little bubble of sex and happiness for just another while. Yet as the second day drew to a close, Klaus was just leaving the shower when he found her standing at the window, wearing the Yukata and having her arms wrapped around herself. He detected a light shiver and took a closer look at her face. She was very pale, her features lacking their usual glow, and his eyes closed for a moment. Gods, he was a cretin! She urgently needed to feed, and he had done nothing but think about pleasure, lovemaking and not letting her escape his arms for more than five minutes at a time.

_You can be such an asshole, Niklaus Mikaelson. There stands the woman you love, and you are not capable of taking care of even her most basic needs._

Stepping up behind her, he pulled her against his chest and encircled her with his arms, letting the warmth flow from him into her. There was no hesitation as she leaned into him, pulling his arms even tighter around her body and letting her head drop back onto his shoulder. Klaus squeezed his eyes shut and commanded himself to stay focused and not let himself be engulfed by the surge of protectiveness that tried to take him hostage. Very gently, he moved his hands to her hips and nudged her to turn around and face him.

"You need to feed, my love. And you will do so now. I have... never before allowed this, but I want you to feed from me... here." Taking her hand, he placed it on the side of his neck, right on his pulse point, and saw her eyes grow large. Then she leaned forward, took his head in her hands and placed an unbearably tender kiss on the spot he had indicated.

"I'm okay. I'm sure we'll find a hospital somewhere in the area where I can get a blood bag."

"Caroline," he said quietly, "here. Now. From me."

She lifted her face and cast a quizzical look at him before her eyes dropped to his neck. As if in a daze, she nodded and moved forward with some trepidation. One hand at the side of his neck, the other sneaking around his waist to pull him closer, she leaned in, her lips brushing his skin like a whisper of silk, once, twice, until Klaus closed his eyes and gave himself over to the stunning sensation. When he felt her tongue run over the length of his carotid artery, exerting some pressure, his arms came around her and he pressed her to him, trapping her against his chest. Fleetingly, the thought crossed his mind that even his considerable sexual appetite should be completely sated by now, even surfeited, but in this one instant, he saw with frightening clarity that it would take two eternities for him to ever even come close to getting enough of her.

And that was the precise moment when Caroline buried her fangs in his neck.

_By all the Gods. _

_By. All. The. Gods!_

His head dropped back, and somewhere on the fringes of his coherent mind, he realised that she had just pushed him into the wall and was moaning against his skin. His entire universe was suddenly centred on a pair of silken lips, a soft tongue... and razor-sharp fangs that took possession of him. The melange was nothing he had ever known - ecstasy, lust, barely discernible pain, and the knowledge that his woman, the love of his life, was devouring his blood with a greed and a ruthlessness that gave him a rare glimpse of the darkness beneath the humanity that was and would always be so dominant in her personality. He loved her light more than anything, and yet, it were the little black places inside her soul, her imperfections, that ultimately made her perfect.

A groan escaped him, pulling a string of answering moans from her and making her press him even more firmly into the wall. His hand was on her hair, urging her head closer and at the same time stroking her satiny strands, when he felt a very familiar impulse swell inside him. It was bloodlust. Pure and simple. The deeply rooted need to sink his fangs into her and take from her what she was taking from him. His eyes on the opposite wall, he let his fangs elongate, sensed the veins under his eyes protrude and opened himself up for his Original powers to flood his body. His grip on her head tightened, and with one fluid movement, he brushed her hair aside, exposed the flawless, lovely neck he knew by now was one of her weakest spots, and lowered his face.

_No._

Klaus' fangs had already skimmed her skin when a voice inside his head yelled at him to stop. His hands balled into fists as he conjured everything he had ever learned about discipline, about control and keeping a lid on his needs. He forced his fangs to retreat and wrapped his arms around Caroline, holding on to her for comfort like a drowning man clutches the last remainder of the ship he has just gone under with. As reason returned little by little, he began to curse himself.

_How could you have forgotten what you are, you unbelievable simpleton?_

Caroline seemed oblivious to what he had almost done to her, submerged in her own, wild need for his blood, so Klaus closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her hair, concentrating on his own breathing and battling down what he had almost allowed to happen. She was drinking his blood already, so she would not have been in any danger, yet for one ephemeral moment, he had entirely put aside the agony his every bite caused her, no matter how briefly. The thought of never being able to indulge in true blood sharing with this incredible woman was not one he appreciated, but if that was the only price to pay for an eternity at her side, he gladly would, a million times over. His urges were something he had learned to control a very long while ago, and albeit being taken by surprise at the sheer strength of this particular desire, he knew he could keep it at bay. He also knew he should right away begin to teach her how to control herself when drinking from another vampire, for something told him that apart from the two times she had drunk from his wrist, she never had - not for pleasure, that was. But he decided against it. This once, he would let her have at him for as long as she needed to. Gods, and how he loved the sensation of her onslaught, let alone the little sounds of pleasure he was certain Caroline did not even realise she was making.

After a while, her frantic movements slowed, and while she was still clinging to him with all her might, there was less urgency in the way she held him. In a very gradual motion, her fangs retreated, but her lips and her tongue remained on his neck, assaulting him with tenderness rather than greed and despair now. With infinite softness, she licked the last few drops from his skin and pressed light kisses to the spots where her fangs had been buried, before she rose to her full height and locked her gaze with his. The mist that seemed to cover her eyes cleared, and an adorably sheepish smile blossomed on her face.

"Are you okay? I think I... lost it a little bit."

"A _little _bit?" He chuckled, gave her a wink and breathed a kiss onto her forehead. "If this is your definition of _a little bit_, I am not certain whether I want to be present when you truly lose it, my love."

Caroline giggled, a sound he had grown to love as an indication that she was completely at ease. "Why do I have the feeling that you wouldn't miss that for anything in the world?" she grinned, leaning in and wrapping her arms around his waist, giving a contented sigh when she felt his arms surround her and draw her nearer. A few moments of silence passed before Klaus bit his lip and took a deep breath.

"There is nothing I could want more than to stay here with you for a decade, forget the world and spend every waking hour making love to you, but I believe that we have already postponed our conversation for too long as it is." Shaking his head, he rolled his eyes at himself. "I can't believe that I of all people am being the voice of reason. Well, I suppose that there must be a first time for everything. Walk?"

She tightened her hold, sending another bout of protectiveness through him. "I don't want to talk yet," she murmured, "I really don't."

"I know. Neither do I. But there are things that need to be said and heard, Caroline, in order for both of us to understand what this is and where we want to go from here." He hated himself for sounding distant and businesslike, so he buried his face in her hair and let his hands wander over her back. "And I hope with every piece of my heart that we _will _have someplace to go."

There was a low sigh when she nuzzled his neck with her nose. "I wouldn't be here if we didn't."

* * *

A broad path led away from the resort and into the forest that covered the steep hills. It seemed an impossible feat to put names to all the shades of green surrounding them, and the air was the crispest and cleanest Caroline had ever breathed. She hadn't known that something as basic as breathing could be described as pleasurable, but every gulp of crystal clear mountain air was a revelation. It felt like she was cleansing her system, washing away everything tainted and impure to make way for a fresh start. The noises of the forest were subdued on this cold day, yet somewhere in the distance, she heard animal paws stomping the ground - and the unmistakable sound of a waterfall.

Klaus' strong, warm hand was holding hers as they made their way up the path, with no particular direction in mind, and Caroline allowed her thoughts to wander. She had still not quite awoken from the daze of two days of almost incessant lovemaking. And while the sex had been beyond words, it had been the tender, intimate moments they had shared that had made her abandon every last reservation. There was that moment during their first night when she had been lying on her stomach, her head resting on her arms, dozing off while Klaus had called reception to have some water delivered to their room. When he had dismissed the employee who had brought two large bottles, he had stretched out next to her, lying on his side, his hand stroking her back so softly that she hardly noticed, and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. _'Will you let me hold you while you fall asleep?" _he had asked, sending an explosion of butterflies, warmth and wonder through her. She had not said a word, merely shifting to her side and moving closer so that her back rested against his chest. His arms had come around her, pulling her to him, his happy sigh making her smile. And of course, she hadn't fallen asleep after all. There had been innumerable little moments like that, moments during which she entirely forgot that there were other sides to him than the caring and passionate sex god. She would have to confront those sides now, and while she knew that they were the main reason for the many obstacles they would be facing, she had also understood one fundamental truth. A truth that would make things very easy - and infinitely complicated.

She was irretrievably in love with Klaus. And _she truly meant it_.

Realisation had first hit her when he had turned to her in his sleep, very early this morning, and murmured her name with an intensity that she had first believed him to be in pain for some reason. She had gently placed a hand on his cheek and whispered, _'I'm here. Just sleep.' _He had not awoken but instinctively wrapped his entire body around hers, making it a bit hard to breathe, and gone on to peacefully slumber in her arms. This need for her that seemed to be so deeply rooted in his subconscious, and the way he had relaxed at feeling her close, had almost brought her to tears. She had found herself wanting to give him that peace of mind again. And again. And again. Just as she longed to permanently feel the complete safety and freedom she experienced in his presence. It was addictive. Caroline Forbes was a vampire, strong and provenly capable of looking after herself, something Klaus had always known and never failed to tell her. Yet about one thing, he had been mistaken - she was not fearless. In her early vampire life, too much had happened. Torture, loss, heartbreak, pain, countless dangers... all of it had shaped her, and while she would never shy away from whatever threat needed to be tackled, there was also a deep-seated fear of what would happen the next time a new danger or an unknown enemy knocked at her door. When with Klaus, no such anxiety besieged her. Even during their first encounters, a strange calmness had settled inside her whenever he was near. He was the most dangerous creature on Earth, but he was not dangerous to _her,_ and the knowledge that he would wipe out all supernatural life on the planet before he would let anyone lay a finger on her again was more reassuring than she had initially thought.

Yet it was so much more than the need to feel protected. Klaus challenged her, he engaged her mind in a way nobody else ever had. He wanted her opinion on everything, and even though he had provided exhaustive explanations on all objects of interest they had as yet seen on their trip, he had never voiced his take on things before she had given him her own view or her theories on what things were and why. It seemed unbelievable, but in spite of his thousand years' worth of knowledge and experience, he never once gave her the impression of not taking her seriously. On the contrary. He made her feel indispensable, interesting... and the most beautiful woman in the world. And while everyone was aware that he would let her get away with murder, only Caroline knew that he also mercilessly called her out on her crap - the same way she had always done with him. _And the Lord knows someone has to rein you in when you get ahead of yourself at times... even though you're no longer a teenager. _Ever since he had set eyes on her in that New Orleans bar, Klaus had been the man she had only ever seen tiny particles of - attentive, funny, mischievous - in a non-bloodthirsty way - charming and downright lovely. But it had not been before this morning that she had finally admitted to herself that she had been in love with that part of him for a very long time.

The question was - how was she going to live with the whole of him? She was only just coming to terms with the fact that she loved Niklaus, the man, and she had to admit that some facets of Big Bad Hybrid Klaus were scorching hot. Others, however, ranged from mildly annoying to downright horrible to entirely unacceptable, and with those, she had to learn to play ball. Still, she understood that it was no longer about deciding _if _she wanted to be with him, it was about deciding on the _how. _How on Earth could they make this work?

But no matter how urgently they needed to speak of it all, her first words did not touch on any of it. They were only for him, and she had been burning to say them from the very moment of their reunion in New Orleans. Somehow, though, the moment had never been right. But here, now, away from the world and surrounded by unspoiled nature, they came naturally.

"Tell me about your daughter."

A thick, loaded silence followed her words. Klaus' face contorted into a hard grimace of pain as he let his gaze wander over the cedars, pines and other trees Caroline didn't recognise that framed the pathway. The wind had freshened, ruffling the green and causing fleeting howls every now and then. Together with the low-hanging clouds and the descending dusk, it made for an almost mysterious atmosphere she would have thoroughly enjoyed under different circumstances. Yet she was completely focused on how he had tensed and was obviously scrambling for words. Without thinking, she lifted his hand to her lips and placed a tender kiss on his fingers, lingering for a long moment before she lowered their entwined hands. He pressed his lips into a thin line and squeezed her hand.

"I do not usually speak of her, to anyone."

"First, this is not 'usually', and I hope I'm not 'anyone'."

He gave her a small smile that did almost, but not quite, reach his dimples. "You could not be further from being 'anyone', my love." His sigh was heavy and betrayed just how hard this must be for him. "Very well. You see, it had taken me a while to come to terms with the thought of being a father. When you have spent a thousand years believing yourself incapable of procreating, the news of a pregnancy can come as quite a shock, and at first, I did not react well to it."

Ignoring the sharp pang of pain that still, after all this time, sliced through her at the thought of Klaus sleeping with Hayley, Caroline gave him a quizzical look. "How was that at all possible?"

"I do not have ultimate proof, but my theory is that when sleeping with another werewolf, my primeval nature - the wolf - takes over and recognises a suitable mate, hence entirely overriding the vampire side. In addition, my being a direct descendant of the Original werewolf family makes my genes stronger than any other wolf's, which adds to the suppression of the vampire in me. I cannot sire any offspring with another vampire, a witch or a human, though, because my werewolf side needs to be complemented with another werewolf to achieve that. I have tried to find out more, yet it is admittedly difficult."

"But Hayley can't have been the first werewolf in a millennium you had sex with," she murmured, hoping the part of the conversation that dealt with Klaus sleeping with other women would soon be over.

His voice softened as he sensed her discomfort. "No, Caroline, but you need to remember that my werewolf side had been dormant for all that time. Hayley was the first and only after I turned into a hybrid. Be that as it may, I was not overly happy with the news. But little by little, the thought of having a child became less threatening and more appealing, although no-one, not even my siblings, actually believed that there was no ill intent behind my gradually beginning to look forward to fatherhood. So to cut a long story short, the day my daughter was born was the beginning of a nightmare that did not end for a very long time."

"What happened, Klaus?" Caroline whispered, her hand firmly wrapped around his, her fingers softly stroking him.

He ran his free hand over his forehead and closed his eyes for a moment before he returned his gaze to her, a distinct flicker in it. "It began with complications. Hayley slipped in and out of consciousness during her labour, she lost a disproportionate amount of blood, and we were not certain whether she was going to make it through the delivery alive. As you well know, there was no doppelganger blood left to turn her into a hybrid, so had she not been strong enough by herself, she would have died. Very shortly before my daughter saw the light of day, she lost consciousness altogether, but she had been coherent long enough this time to send the baby on her way. So the little one was born, and Rebekah placed her right in my arms." He paused, and Caroline's heart both swelled and broke at the expression on his face. "I... I looked at her, Caroline, as she looked at me, and... I was..."

Caroline halted her steps and without a word, let her arms sneak around his waist, beginning to soothingly stroke his back and gazing up into his eyes with all the calm she could muster. His arms seemed a little unsteady when he returned her embrace and pressed a long, lingering kiss to her forehead before resting his own against hers. After a moment, he continued, his voice barely audible.

"You may know that my brother Henrik died when he was still a young boy. Unbelievable as it may seem, he adored me, and he looked at me with a love and a trust so unconditional that the memory has not left me to this day. No-one has ever seen me like he has. Until the day I held my daughter. She had only just been born, and yet her eyes held the same expression my brother's had. That was the moment when I understood I loved that little girl, in the untarnished, wholehearted way I used to love back in my human days, before I became what I am. It was also the moment when I heard her heartbeat." Klaus had not moved, his forehead still resting against hers. She felt his tension and wished there was anything she could do to ease it. "I have listened to the rhythm of human hearts for a thousand years, Caroline, I hear the most insignificant of irregularities, and I can tell exactly what those irregularities mean. I am even capable of foreseeing the precise hour of death of an ailing heart. My daughter... had mere minutes to live. And there was nothing for me to do but watch her die. Human medicine could not have saved her, turning her was no option for obvious reasons, and not even magic can strengthen a human heart for an extended period of time when it is too weak to beat on its own. So we looked at each other, spending what time we could together, until it was over."

The breath he took was shaky, making Caroline cup his face with her hands and anxiously look into his face - only to have her heart clench in pain at seeing a single tear on his cheek. Without a moment's hesitation, she leaned forward and brushed her lips over his. At first, there was no reaction but a palpable increase of tension, yet it took him no more than a few seconds to yank her against him and return her kiss with a vehemence that took her by surprise. It was none of his erotic, deep kisses that always made her blood boil - it was a gesture of need, of the desperate longing to mute a grief that had not entirely subsided even after so many years. After an instant of feeling a bit overwhelmed, Caroline pushed everything aside and let her instincts guide her, melting into his arms and allowing Klaus to take over. To take whatever it was he needed right now, whatever it was he would have needed back then. And it was as clear as the air around them that what he needed was _her_. One hand in her hair, the other on her back, he held her so hard that she was on the verge of being crushed, but his lips on hers were soft and almost pleading. Their kiss turned slow, careful, and when his lips began to move over her face, it was Caroline who had to strangle back a sob. He kissed her cheeks, her temples, her brows... and in the end, her eyes, in a way so soft that everything inside her began to cry out. Taking her face in his hands, he waited for her to open her eyes - and what she saw in his features mirrored what it was he had just described a minute ago.

_'The untarnished, wholehearted way I used to love back in my human days.'_

It was the way Klaus loved her, too.

With her heart in her throat, Caroline covered his hands with hers. "I don't know what to say to you, Klaus. I am so sorry. _So _sorry."

He nodded. "I have never said a word about how much my daughter meant to me, not even to my siblings, although I have a feeling that they know, and I never intended to, not even to you. But I am finding it unpleasant to hide my feelings when I am in your company, my love, and I believe that you are entitled to the truth."

Giving him a tentative smile, she asked, "What was her name?"

"We had decided to wait until she was born before finally choosing." He didn't say anything further, but something in his voice made her probe.

"You _have _named her, haven't you? For yourself, for your memories?"

This time, he hesitated for a long while, and when Caroline was about to say something, assuming he would not answer, he said, "Her name is Karys. It is of Welsh origin, and I have always had a fondness for that particular name, although it is rather rare. Maybe _because _it is rather rare."

"It's beautiful," she murmured, pressing a quick kiss to his fingers, "what does it mean?"

"Love," he simply said.

"Karys," Caroline repeated, her voice a whisper. "I like it. You will take me to her grave when we return, won't you?"

A wild array of emotions danced over his face as he touched his lips to hers. "Yes. I most certainly will."

She looked at him when he released her, and this time, it was her turn to tense as she uttered the words that had earlier crossed her mind. "Have you thought of giving it another try? Of having another child, I mean? Have you considered that?"

Klaus took her hands in his and looked her in the eyes, his gaze very firm. "I have. For all of five seconds. Caroline, the grief I experienced over Karys' death is something I wish never to feel again. And whilst I do not doubt that I would love my child, very much so, I do not believe that being a father is something I am well-suited for. Loving a child does not necessarily imply being a good parent. But first and foremost... do you seriously think that after everything that has happened between us, I would so much as consider another woman to be the mother of my child? With that, my love, I rest my case."

_Stop hyperventilating, Caroline._

Resuming their walk, they fell silent, each dwelling on their own thoughts and letting the surroundings work their magic. They were already halfway up the hill when Klaus spoke again.

"You said, 'when we return'. What will happen once we do, Caroline? I stand by what I have said ever since the status quo between us changed. The decision is and will always be yours. However, I do not plan on making it easy for you to decide against me, against _us, _hence I will start by saying this." He paused and swallowed. "I am a restless man, I always have been. I had to be. My sleep is shallow, my senses are constantly focused on everything that moves or makes a sound, and in the very moment of my arrival at one place, I am already thinking about where I am headed next. Not so now. Not so here. Not so... with you. Whatever little sleep I got was sound as I have never known it, my entire being has been concentrated on nothing but you, and for the first time ever, I feel like I have arrived to stay. Caroline, I could easily spend the remainder of my existence hidden away up here with you, and I would be wanting for nothing. I cannot lose this, I cannot lose you, and I need so much more of you, in every way. So, if you require more time, you shall have it. If you ask not to be confronted with my life in New Orleans and everything it implies, you won't be. I just... need you to be a part of my life. What I am also saying is that I am prepared to pay any price you care to name, but I do not know whether I will be _able _to do so."

For one second, she was tempted. Tempted to accept the additional time he was offering... and tempted to demand that he stop being what he was, abandon his ambitions and turn into a 'regular' vampire. But that was exactly what teenage Caroline would have done, the girl she had been five years ago. The woman she was now had learned, grown, and understood that no person could ever be truly good or truly evil, just as entirely suppressing someone's nature turned that someone into no-one. And right here, in this very second, her nagging question on how she was going to live with those _other _sides of him had been answered.

"Five years ago, Klaus, you gave me the space I needed to discover who I am and what I want from life. Well, one of the things I have found out I want from life is you." When he started to speak, she held up a hand. "Let me finish. I know that's a challenge for you, but try this time." He gave her a bright smile at their shared remembrance. "You also promised to go and find the man you were during your human days. That's the guy I am on this trip with, so we know you've definitely found him, and what I'm seeing of him is amazing. Beautiful. I just love to be with him."

The expression on his features turned into one of nameless wonder as he took her hand and wordlessly kissed it. His eyes were shining the way they had when he had first seen her at his family's ball, ages ago, and Caroline briefly remembered how that look on his face had turned her into a nervous wreck, although she had incessantly told herself it was nothing but her revulsion that had shattered her stomach into pieces that night. And every time she saw him after that.

"Klaus, I want to see more of you. Of who you really are beneath all the megalomania and the King of New Orleans drama."

This time, his smile was tight and uneasy. "I anticipated this. The price you are asking is for me to entirely renounce who and what I am. Correct?"

"I'm asking you to be who you are with me, to be _yourself,_ more often. Tell me this - do you have to make a conscious effort when we are together? An effort to keep yourself in check, to control your anger and whatever it is that drives you all the time?"

There was a short silence while he considered her question. "No," he finally admitted, "not in the very least. Apart from controlling the driving urge to rip off your clothes twenty-four seven, that is."

Caroline grinned. The second-long respite from all the heavy talk felt good. "Don't you _dare_ start to control that!" she commanded, her tone imperious, making him chuckle. Oh, how she loved that smile! _Don't get sidetracked now._ "Anyway, you see what I'm getting at, right? During this past week, you didn't have any reason to be the Big Bad Hybrid, and all I'm asking is that you take that path as often as you can. As long as you or your family are not being threatened and nobody openly defies your rule, keep a damn lid on the bloodshed." She drew a breath. "My first impulse was to ask you to only ever turn into everyone-trembles-at-my-name Klaus when your family is in real danger, but I think I understood that being feared and being _King_ is important to you. I don't really get that, given that the whole wide supernatural world knows who you are, but it looks like it has become a part of your personality over the years, so I will have to find some way for me to live with it. So here's how. I'm not telling you to stop being Big Bad, Klaus. I'm telling you that I'll call you out on your bullshit. Every single time you screw up, and we both know you will. I'll never tire of it, and you'll have hell to pay. I'll yell at you for all the Americas to hear, you'll sleep in the doghouse, we won't be on speaking terms for weeks at a time, I'll shred your favourite Henleys, and I'll have your siblings dagger you until you come to your senses." She took a step towards him and ran a hand over his cheek. "But one thing I won't do. _Not ever. _I will never betray you, Klaus, and that is a promise_. _I've made my choice, here and now, and I'll stand by who I've chosen. I'll stand by you. Today, tomorrow, and in ten thousand years._"_

He knew her well enough to see that she meant every word. His voice was hoarse when he said, "Why _are_ you choosing me, Caroline?"

For a split second, her old insecurities bubbled to the surface. Did he suddenly have second thoughts? Didn't he want her to choose him? She examined his face, searching for clues, when he took her hand and placed it on his chest, right over his heart, covering it with his. That was when she understood - _he _was the insecure one in this scenario. He had lived through a thousand years of mistrust because somewhere deep down, he believed he wasn't worthy of anyone's affection, and that was not something he would shed just like that. Well, she could only truly prove herself to him over time, but she could at least try to give him a little reassurance now.

"I am choosing you, Niklaus Mikaelson," she smiled, "because you've always treated me with respect. I'll file what you did to me when you were trapped in Elena's house under temporary insanity due to grief so your record remains clean. I'm choosing you because you keep me on my toes in a way no-one else ever has. Because you make me feel infinitely safe, warm and treasured. Because you can be such a jerk. Because you make me laugh. Because you make me cry. Because you didn't leave my head, not even after five years of never laying eyes on you, and I doubt you ever will again. Because I just can't believe that you are really that freaking good in bed and I'll need you to prove it to me again every single day." His face had split into the single most lovely smile she had ever seen on him, and Caroline couldn't help but move into his arms and kiss him, long and lovingly. They were both a little short of breath when she broke the kiss and gave him another smile. "And because I know that you love me."

Klaus tightened his hold and rested his forehead against hers like he had done earlier. "I do. The Gods know I do, Caroline." He leaned back and let his gaze wander over every detail of her face. She closed her eyes and let his words echo through her system, letting them fill her up and sway and glow like an ocean of warm, liquid gold. So this was what epic love felt like... glorious, universal, eternal. And outrageously difficult. Caroline felt a sudden bout of gratefulness at having found what she knew was most rare in this world. The real thing, with all its ups and downs. No matter how hard it was going to be at times, it _was _the real thing, for both of them. And they would bloody well make it work.

"Well," Klaus murmured, his lips at her ear, "would you like to know why I chose you, a long time ago?" She could only nod. "At first I thought it was your light, and up to a point, it was. You held a beauty for me I had lost all hope of ever finding. Your potential, everything you carried within you that was trying so hard to find its way to the surface, intrigued me to no small extent. And yes... you were also a challenge, I have to admit that, a challenge I was dead set on mastering. And then I discovered that smart mouth of yours, the moments of insane fearlessness whenever you faced me. It irritated me to the same degree I loved it. I found myself wanting to intimidate you, to make you as afraid of me as everyone else was, but to my eternal surprise, I found that I hated the thought of you fearing me. Anyway, I am digressing. I chose you, Caroline Forbes, because apart from Elijah, you were the first person in a thousand years - and maybe even before that - who took the pains to look beyond the war zone that I am. I do not care that it began as a repeated ruse to distract me. Others have attempted that, successfully sometimes, but no-one's eyes ever saw what yours did. And I fell in love with you for good when I heard your heartbeat the day of the pageant I escorted you to. When I told you about the hummingbird. Your heart sounded just like that little bird's, Caroline. Do you recall what I said?"

Her voice was barely audible. "You said that it was the only time you thought about being human."

With a nod, he brushed his knuckles over her temple. "Yes. It still is to this day, my love - I do not wish to be human. Not then, not now, not ever. But on some very rare occasions, I do recall that a long time ago, I was. Whenever I hear your heart beat like that, I _do _remember. And I will tear and feather you if you ever mention this again, even to me."

Torn between a giggle and the stupid tears that were welling up behind her eyes, she swallowed. "Okay. Just promise me one thing."

"Anything on Earth," he said solemnly.

"Swear to me that you will burn my Miss Mystic application."

A beautiful, dimpled smile played around his lips. "I promise to aspire, inspire and perspire in my endeavours to do so," he nodded, biting his lip to stifle a laugh.

With mock outrage, she stemmed her hand into her hips, giving him a glare. "I'll tell your sister that you didn't _lend _me the prom dress but that you gave it to me for keeps because you think she looks fat in it!"

Now a gleam of real panic flashed through his eyes, making her burst into giggles after all when he held up his hands in defeat. "All right, all right. I will burn the bloody paper, and you may witness the ceremony. Something I already know by heart and that I can use against you as I please is not worth dying over."

They burst into laughter, and Klaus ran a gentle hand through her hair before he leaned down to kiss her lightly. Caroline's eyes closed when she broke the kiss and took him into her arms, her head against his chest, giving a contented sigh. For a while, they just stood like that, holding each other, feeling the consuming happiness that came with a new start, with a love that was only at its very beginning and that they both knew would still grow... and last. Without thinking, she moved her face and kissed the curve of his neck.

"I love you, Klaus."

In a movement too fast for her to discern, he flashed to a fallen tree trunk, sat, and pulled her onto his lap, cradling her face in his hands. The longing in his eyes was unlike anything she had ever seen. "Look me in the eyes when you say it."

She fixed her gaze on his, letting herself be filled with all those crazy, wonderful, undying feelings she was only just beginning to discover. "I love you. We will make our way through everything else, but this is what matters. You and me."

Caroline saw a hint of pain on his face. He knew she was speaking the truth, but then... he was still Klaus. And his next words confirmed her suspicions. "We both know that however much I have fought and will continue to fight for it, I do not deserve your love. Not truly."

"Maybe not. But you have it anyway. You have _me._ And someday, who knows, you might even deserve it all."

His lips covered hers, shy and hesitating, his kiss of a sweetness that made her heart ache a little. Until she reminded herself that all of this, all of _him, _belonged to her. Now, and for all times to come.

With some reluctance, Klaus let go of her lips and kissed her eyes, something she had grown to adore more than anything else. He searched her face again for a long time, and his voice was low but firm when he spoke again. It was a quote by Edmund Spenser she remembered from 'Sense and Sensibility'. And she wondered if anything could ever describe the two of them more aptly.

"For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought."

X

_The world was all before them, where to choose_

_Their place of rest, and Providence their guide._

_They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,_

_Through Eden took their solitary way._

- John Milton, _Paradise Lost _

_X_

**THE END**


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